My Strategic Partnership Internship at Catawiki

Introducing Catawiki

When I landed my internship at Catawiki, I didn’t really know what to expect. I never worked at a large corporate company like this. Catawiki is the go-to online marketplace for buying and selling special objects, from rare Pokémon cards to Birkin handbags, and even amazing vintage cars! Weekly, over 75,000 unique items are up for auction, each one vetted by in-house experts. My role as a Strategic Partnerships Intern, was to dive deep into the world of influencer marketing and strategic collaborations.

My Role and Responsibilities

As a Strategic Partnerships Intern, my job was a perfect mix of creativity and strategy. I was part of a team that creates exciting partnerships across various industries, including art magazines like Vogue and Architectural Digest, cool companies like Hypebeast and organisations like FOAM Photography museum, and even sports clubs like AS Monaco or Racing 92. Based on my interest for social media marketing, my main focus was on influencer partnerships.

Here’s a roundup of my day-to-day activities:

• Scouting Influencers: I spent a lot of time on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, hunting for influencers who fit Catawiki’s brand, especially across its many categories in Art, Interiors, Collectables and Luxury. It was all about finding those unique voices that resonate with our audience, the passionate enthusiast – i.e., people with special interests!
• Negotiating Deals: Once I identified potential influencers, and got approval from my team to move forward, I helped negotiate partnerships. This involved a lot of outreach, discussions, and logistics planning. It also involved contract negotiation, which was a challenge for me as I had to learn to negotiate budgets. At the beginning I perceived this as very uncomfortable, but over time I gained a lot of skills in that aspect.
• Campaign Management: I collaborated with different teams across the marketing team of Catawiki to ensure our influencer campaigns were seamless. This meant working closely with our social media and category leads to integrate these partnerships into our broader marketing strategy.
• Performance Analysis: After campaigns went live, I monitored their performance, analyzing data to provide insights and recommendations for future collaborations. After the conclusion of the campaigns, I prepared decks presenting this data for internal review, as well as decks for the partners for external review.
• Creating Materials: From pitching new partnerships to preparing reports on ongoing ones, I was involved in creating all sorts of materials to support our efforts. I also got to work together with the Creative Studio in creating specific material for our socials, and strategising with partners in the types of content they could create to post about the activations they were promoting.

Personal Development

One of the highlights of my internship was the focus on my personal growth within this unknown territory of the “corporate environment”. Weekly meetings with my supervisor provided space for feedback and reflection. I set personal goals at the start, like learning to forge corporate long-term partnerships. I got to lead several partnerships from start to finish, including a collaboration with Italian artist Sergio Fiorentino for our ROOMS series. I really appreciated the trust the company put in me and at no point felt like a burden to them, as I believe that their trust to let me take lead of projects from start to finish is where I learned the most. The only downside of this however, is that I must admit sometimes I felt like I was giving a lot of time and ideas to the company in return for a lot of learnt knowledge, but not a lot of monetary reward on my part.

However, the amount of networking was another big plus. With a marketing team of 60 professionals, I had the chance to connect with and learn from a diverse group of experts. These connections, especially on LinkedIn, will be invaluable for my future career.

Conclusion

My internship at Catawiki was an incredible adventure, full of learning, growth, and hands-on experience in the world of strategic partnerships and influencer marketing. I really learned how to function in a fast-paced corporate environment and how to apply my creative strategy ideas within the framework of an already established brand. More general skills like how to handle workload, deal with supervisors, organise my time and conduct myself professionally and efficiently in a corporate environment are also going to be pivotal in the future of my professional career.