Hi, I’m Zuzana, a bachelor student of Communication Science and right now I am slowly finishing my internship at Synofit. Synofit is a company that focuses on the production and promotion of dietary supplements and overall healthy lifestyle. I have been an intern at Synofit for nearly four months now and while most of the time everything was going smoothly sometimes the exact opposite was true. So, I will walk you through one of those situations. With this I would like to show, that contrary to my expectations, bad communication and disorganization is not over once you enter the work force after studies.
What is this about?
To start off with the setting, I’ll explain the situation. Synofit and more specifically the marketing team (which I am a part of) is in charge of coming up with a promotion every month or so. Promotion such as, 25% discounts, 1+1 Gratis, competitions for free products and more. Aside from coming up with the idea, the team is responsible for, creating the sufficient materials, e.g., flyers, banners, stickers, and distributing them to relevant stores and customers.
What’s the problem?
The promotion process was problematic on multiple fronts. My supervisor and I were responsible for creating the visual materials, such as flyers and stickers, for the promotion. While we created the design, everything needed approval from another department. This resulted in lengthy communication via emails and messages. The other side simply couldn’t make up their mind. This led to us remaking the same designs multiple times, often unnecessarily coming back to previous versions.
The design was then finally approved, but fear not this is not where the story ends! We had to order the materials, have them delivered to our Amsterdam office, sort them, print letters, assemble the envelope contents, stamp and address the envelopes, and finally mail them to retail stores and customers. This process was ought to be simple. And it would have been if we had sufficient ink in the printer, the materials were delivered to Amsterdam instead of Belgium, the postal stamp worked, and there were more than two people in the office to hand-stuff over a thousand envelopes.
It’s probably clear where this is leading: things did not go as planned.
The crisis day
So, once the printer ink and material was correctly delivered, from the two weeks we had to prepare there was suddenly one day to get everything done before the start of the promotion. My supervisor and I alone, sorted out over a thousand envelopes, put a letter, a sticker and a flyer in each of them, stamped them and stuck an address on each of them individually. This took the whole day. From 7:30 until 20:00. So, that didn’t work out perfectly.
To be fair
I do have to mention that I do not blame any of the people in the company for this. Now. In retrospect. This whole process was the first time the company has done something like this on such a scale. Moreover the person in charge and coincidentally my supervisor has been working there for only two months when this was done. And it must be recognized that the next promotion went much more smoothly.
That being said, this whole situation transported me back to my study groups and uni-project full of chaos, self-inflicted stress and pressure.
So the message from this blog from me, is that no matter where you are, how qualified you are, things can just get complicated.
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