Week 2: The Intern Life

I have officially completed the first week of my summer internship with the Market Research department of Addison Whitney. And I am pleased to say that I am loving it so far! As I mentioned last week, this is my first internship ever and so I was pretty nervous to begin my first day and had no idea what to expect. My nerves were calmed fairly quickly though because the employees and office environment of Addison Whitney were so welcoming and amazing, specifically my immediate supervisor Michelle. She guides me through everything I need to learn and sticks by my side when I need help or have questions. She’s been awesome, as has the whole market research team, and I can’t wait to work with them for the rest of the summer.

For most of the week, I worked on something called a “deck shell” which is simply a PowerPoint. The deck compiles all the information about a specific client, project, and the data gathered from the research done for the particular project. This information gathered from all the research is about potential names for the client. And it has to be perfect and error-free, which calls for a lot of attention to detail. I am a pretty detail-oriented person, but market research takes details to another level! And I learned why paying attention to the fine details is so important to market research, and it totally makes sense. I tried to look over and proofread my deck shell as much as I could before I gave it up to Michelle for review. Hopefully I didn’t make too many mistakes. Anyway, after the deck is complete, the market research team has a meeting with the consultants in the office and they dwindle down the name options to the ones they think are most likely to be approved in the end. These opinions on likelihood of approval are all based on the research and the consultants knowledge and judgment. I actually got to experience one of these meetings on Wednesday and it was pretty interesting. It made me realize how big of a role market research plays in the process of branding.

There is so much to learn about market research and branding, and that is my main expectation for the summer; to learn all there is to learn. My main responsibility this week was the deck shell, but I will be learning and working on many different things for the rest of the summer and I am pumped. My supervisor said once I’ve learned the ropes of everything, I will hopefully have my own project. I’m definitely nervous for that, but am absolutely looking forward to it because I’ll be able to put my learning experiences and new knowledge to the test.

The office has started a public speaking series that happens every Tuesday morning. Each week has a different topic about giving presentations and public speaking and a few participants are asked to actually give a speech during the session. The first session of the summer was on Tuesday and I think it was the highlight of my week. I was very surprised at myself when I realized this was the highlight of my week because I am terrified of public speaking and everything involved with it. But I think I liked the session so much because I learned some great tips about speaking. I also enjoyed it because I got to be around other people who were also nervous about speaking and it made me feel less nervous and more comfortable.

To conclude, I’m excited to go in tomorrow morning and am looking forward to what the new week brings me!