By Alicia Spilsbury
After the completion of my 6 month internship at Scotch & Soda, it only seems right to reflect on my time there and also as my first work experience.
When starting the internship I had very low expectation of what my tasks were going to look like, only to be pleasantly surprised that I was being treated and put to useful work like everyone else. I learnt a lot of valuable lessons working at Scotch & Soda, not only in the first steps of my career but also personally. Some of the most valuable lessons that I learnt in terms of my career, is that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you know what you did wrong and you’re ready to come up with a solution to fix it. I also learnt the importance to speak up. In my academic life, I have always been the quiet one in class who gets things done but doesn’t like to talk much or give my own ideas. Scotch & Soda taught me how important it is to speak up and share ideas, because even if I feel as though it might not be good enough, my idea could either be the solution they were looking for, or the inspiration of a brain storm leading to a great idea. As to what it taught me personally, which links to my last point is confidence. Confidence in ones self and in others makes things easier. Confidence in yourself will better your life in many different angles, and confidence in others leads to better relationship and also more efficient bonds.
As a first work experience I learnt so much about things I didn’t even know were important or existed. All the behind the scenes of how campaigns are created and pushed, seems so simple from the outside but actually has a lot of small factors and communication from many people in order to get an outcome. One very much unexpected event was when Scotch & Soda declared bankruptcy and I had to learn to adapt to that. Although at first I didn’t know if I still had an internship, once I was hired back I got to observe how a company deals with bankruptcy and all the decisions that go into getting a company back on track. Although I wouldn’t recommend working for a company that goes bankrupt, I feel as though it turned into a positive learning experience for me.
The results of my research turned out to have an interesting outcome, although H1 was rejected, H2 had supporting results and will thus hopefully be useful to Scotch & Soda. H1: Newsletters will have a more positive effect of people’s willingness to engage with Scotch & Soda than push notifications. and H2: Newsletters will have a higher willingness to engage from older audiences than younger audiences.
However, just because the results of H1 were insignificant does not necessarily mean that the outcome is bad. As mentioned in my research, this could just mean that both campaign tools are just as effective as each other however, that is not what my study was researching so this would be something that future research could investigate.
Although Scotch & Soda have not seen my research results yet, I am sure they will appreciate the insights that I have obtained.