Intern Diary: Holly Domjan

Hello!

As part of the ‘Professional Pathways to Marketing’ programme run by the University of Exeter, for their students interested in a marketing career, I have just completed a week’s internship at Astley Media as a PR & Marketing intern.

This was going to be my first experience as an intern for a company so needless to say I was a little anxious, but mostly excited. Astley Media were taking on two interns from the programme and so I would be working alongside one of my friends, Beth – which subsided some of the initial apprehension!

During the week before we had met with Dan (the managing director) who was going to be our line manager, he was very friendly and reassured us not to worry about anything and that it was a very relaxed working environment.

So, on the first day we arrived to a very warm welcome from the staff – everyone was happy to have some helping hands which was great. We were shown around the office and most importantly the tea, coffee and biscuits area – the biscuit tin much lighter now than at the beginning of the week (sorry!).

Our first assignment was to complete some research on a client and brainstorm ways in which they could reach their target market more effectively using social media channels and via other printed media. As an avid user of social media, I had relatively high expectations of myself to deliver on this.

Later on in the week we did some work for the same client, proposing how they could challenge stereotypes associated with their products and increase awareness for their award winning produce. It was an interesting company to work on and I look forward to hearing how their marketing campaign pans out.

Another project of mine was to construct surveys for both employees and employers regarding office designs, employee well-being and satisfaction and the future of the workplace. This was also a new task for me, something I had never done before yet thoroughly enjoyed. It allowed me to consider the potential impacts of the structural aspects of an organisation on employee productivity and engagement.

To help them market their business we also drafted a social media campaign that was to be launched and run over 5 days. The plan included; promoting their own work, general blog posts and interesting facts about office designs, engaging users with their content and finally calls to action and sales pitches.

This was insightful and it was useful to learn about the methodology used and how businesses operate through these channels.

The company this was on behalf of have completed some really cool, creative and innovative work which has most certainly helped me recognise my interest in and appreciation for design and graphics.

I wanted to explore this interest further so have spent some time designing Twitter and Instagram posts for Astley Media that they can use to promote themselves on social media platforms. A fun job to round off a week of hard work!

If you’re thinking about gaining some experience within PR or marketing Astley Media are a great company with a real passion for what they do – it was a pleasure to work with them.

Holly's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holly-domjan/