Week 5: Making Progress

It’s hard to believe I’ve been an intern at Addison Whitney for a month now. The time is flying by and it’s a bittersweet feeling. I’ve learned so much in these short four weeks and am only looking forward to the next four!

On the first day of my internship, I received a training manual from my supervisor of all the things I would be learning and doing throughout the summer. At the end of the week, my supervisor and I sat down and took a look at my progress so far and realized we had been through almost everything in the manual! I’ve still got a couple things left, and definitely want to practice and continue to work on some of the other points in the manual, but nonetheless I have learned a ton and am very happy about it. Specifically this past week, I learned how to draft a questionnaire (then it got approved, which was a good feeling), I learned how to compile data from the research into the deck shell, and I learned about AW’s drug databases. The databases were pretty cool – they have thousands of drugs and information about drugs. I didn’t even know that many drugs existed!

For the entirety of the internship so far, I have been surprised by the overall branding process. I know I’ve mentioned before how most people don’t realize how much work goes into branding and this is why people think they can do it themselves. I myself had no idea how much work went into branding before I arrived at Addison Whitney, and I continue to be surprised by the amount. I’ve had the most exposure to the research & analysis side of the branding process, since I am the market research intern. But this week, I had the opportunity to sit in on a client call with a consultant and a verbal team member. While I can’t go into many details about the call, I got to experience and learn more of the verbal and naming side of the branding process and just how AW interacts with its clients and how important its clients’ needs are. I have to say this experience was one of the highlights of the past week.