Hello, my name is Yalin Buse and I am in my second year of studying communication science here at the UvA. For my internship, I decided to get to know the field of event production, therefore I would like to share my journey here with you all!
Even before starting my studies here in Amsterdam, I completed an internship in a PR-agency in my hometown Hamburg. There I learned that a huge part of PR work was events, since they helped our brands to connect to their stakeholders. So when it came to choosing my internship I quickly realized that the event industry had sparked my my interest.
I found my internship company through online research, I started following them on Instagram and soon realized that the projects they did were very special and matched very well with my idea of what I was interested in.
Braas Events, where I did my internship is a young Amsterdam-based firm. Its primary focus is on brand activations and marketing events, wherefore it tied in very well with the events I was in contact with at the PR agency in Hamburg. They have a range of international clients, such as Levis, Vichy, and Bumble, but also a Dutch client base, featuring De Bijenkorf or the music label Topnotch.
Before my internship, I must admit my knowledge of event production and its main processes was very limited. And after starting my first day I quickly knew that I had a lot to learn. Most people think organizing an event is merely coming up with a concept and getting in touch with suppliers and staff. Yet the process is much more than that. Especially when working with big brands and organizing activations and their marketing events, one has to get a good understanding of the clients brand guideline and the image they want to bring across. Therefore our team always had to get a good understanding about the goal of the event and the image the client wants to portray to its clients and stakeholders. This was one of the first things I learned and it also helped me when I was copy writing texts about our own company for our new website and social media channels, because I had to ask myself what is our identity, what tone do we want to have and how do we want to be perceived by others.
I will admit especially in the first weeks I made many mistakes, I had never worked with a budget sheet before or had to coordinate suppliers, yet over the span of the 12 weeks my confidence in my own abilities increased and the tasks did not seem all too difficult anymore. What I especially loved about the internship was that every day was different, some days we would sit in the office and do a lot of planning whereas other days we were visiting locations or executing events for our client. If I would have to think back I could’nt say what I preferred, yet I did find out that I loved creating concepts and coming up with creative solutions for our clients. And when we received the feedback that they loved our ideas and that we exceeded expectations, the feeling was so rewarding.
For everyone interested in PR I would highly recommend doing an internship in event production, because it teaches you to see events and marketing campaigns from the other, executing side, which will teach you what leads to great engagement with audiences. And lastly, for everyone who loves combining hand on work with planning, event production is amazing!