Internship at Sanoma.
The summer is almost here, which means that my internship is almost ending. I did an internship for 5 months at Sanoma in Hoofddorp. Every day I would take the train and walk into the building of the big media content company. In this building over 30 magazine titles are being produced. I was a marketing intern at the parenting magazine Kek Mama. I was part of a team of 4 that was responsible for the advertising and marketing of the magazine. In this team the main tasks were analyzing the online results of every month, organizing events and special deals for the subscribers, making newsletters and produce innovative techniques to reach more people in the parenting segment. It was an interesting internship because besides wanting to grow as much as possible it was also challenging to stick with the ideals of the magazine. Creative marketing that fitted the context and the magazine was there for a must.
Another part of the internship was the learning process as a team member. I never really experienced this because in my job I mostly work alone. It was hard for me to fit in the environment because I had to adjust my manners quite a bit. But I learned a lot from this and also that feedback is not necessarily critique. This showed me personal learning objectives as well.
It was a nice experience to see a close team work together to put together a new magazine each month. And next to the practical parts there were a lot of fun parts as well. For example, all the products that are sent to the company for reviewing are sold in a little raffle. Once every 3 months, I organized this and this caused a lot of fun at the office. Also when I was an intern at Kek Mama the head editor and the marketing manager stopped at the magazine. I was surprised how much had to be planned and organized for them to be able to leave. It was quite a big step for the magazine and I learned a lot about being in a team and being flexible when this was needed. Maybe the most important thing is that you have to be able to have a good time during work. You can be as good in the function as you like, but if you do not have a nice relationship with your co workers you cannot flourish at the job. I learned that it is really important to figure out what you really want and try different things.