As much as people expecting 2020 as a regular year at the last day of 2019, I expected myself as a regular customer of de Bijenkorf who visits the store frequently and enjoy carefree shopping experience. However, so far 2020 is unprecedentedly chaotic, and me, myself, started to work as an intern at this famous Dutch department store and worried about its performance under coronavirus crisis…
Starting internship during lock-down as well as the peak of Covid-19
Technically speaking, I experienced Covid-19 crisis twice and still be in part of it. At the end of January this year, I spontaneously booked my flights to China and intended to celebrate my birthday with family. However, the situation in China back then was extremely bad and dramatically influenced by coronavirus. So I had no choice but flew back to Amsterdam in the same week (in case KLM stopped flights to Shanghai, which happened later), and started to find an internship to get graduated. Luckily, on my last job interview, I had a great connection with my future internship host/supervisor. We also have similar attitudes and thoughts towards how to behave under Covid-19, which is rare nowadays. Eventually, I turned out to be the only few interns in de Bijenkorf who has the opportunity to get started, and others were cancelled due to this unexpected crisis. Therefore, I truly felt grateful. My journey was officially started as an intern at this historical as well as most well-known chain of high-end department stores’ head office, came along with enormous unknown challenges.
Find a way when there looks no way: Implement H5 game into marketing
In terms of my internship role, I am mainly responsible for the department of international marketing. It is a rather small team, because de Bijenkorf focuses more on local dutch customers. But we still wish to leave the best impression to all international customers. In the context of Covid-19, there were much less international customers or travelers than before. Therefore, our budget were tight. So the tricky problem is: how to find a way when there seems to be no way? And what could we do to keep the international customer and get prepared when tourism is back in the town? In cooperation with several partners, which takes a considerable amount of communication, we ultimately developed the idea of implementing H5 game in the marketing plan. T0 briefly introduce, H5 game is interactive and branded game in social media apps, especially in WeChat. As this idea is merely an experiment, we didn’t where it would lead us. Surprisingly, it turns out to be a great success: (1)attracted 1000+ players, (2) doubled followers of de Bijenkorf official account and (3) resulted in a significant sales uplift. It is a lesson I learnt for my future work, as well as for life. Even though sometimes the situation looks like a dilemma and impossible to handle, please keep the hope and believe: there is always more solutions than the problem itself.
To be continued…
Being honest, I can’t lie that I never experienced any stress during my internship. But I am grateful for every bit of my internship, no matter bitterness or sweetness. It is how life itself tastes like, we shall embrace, especially during this very special time period. Don’t give in yourself, no matter how difficult and hopeless the world could be, let hope sheds light to our fragile heart.
P.S: It is also de Bijenkorf’s 150 years birthday this year! In case you don’t know, de Bijenkorf stands for the beehive. Therefore, wish everyone #beesafe and #beeinspired !
