End of placement, beginning of internship

Hello!

My marketing placement year at IBM has finally come to an end! A year of working in marketing full-time has given me a glimpse of the real world and how marketing can function outside of the textbooks, lectures and models that university can bring.

If you're currently studying marketing at university and have the opportunity to take part in a placement year, DO IT. It will open your eyes to the real world, you will learn an awful lot and you may decide what field of marketing you would like to work in, or in my case... NOT work in.

I first ventured into studying/ wanting a career in marketing whilst steering away from Journalism/ Public Relations therefore for me, I want to pursue something creative, which I can really sink my teeth into and experiment with... the great thing about marketing as a career is that there are so many avenues to go down, one area of marketing can be completely different to another!

Working at IBM was an amazing opportunity, a world-wide company which has a huge budget and is therefore able to commit to huge conferences, websites which are designed down to the T by the leading design agency in the world, events which the Senior execs of the biggest organisations in the country will happily attend at short notice... all of these things are obviously, amazing assets and what better position would you want your company to be in? The thing is, they don't actually NEED to do any marketing! The IBM brand is so well established and is a household name, in the business world it's the top dog of technology and therefore where is the competition? Where is the drive to increase awareness from 0% to 100%? It just doesn't exist!

The opportunities at working in such a large organisation, however, are probably unmatched with other types of jobs. I was able to get expenses to travel across the country, try out lots of education courses, meet hundreds of new people and network to my hearts content! I was also able to see what was successful and the struggle that such a large organisation faces when transitioning in to a new way of thinking/ new technologies.

A big company can offer flexible working, a great pension scheme, great pay, great facilities and the support you might need at a readily available service. However, weigh this up against just being 'a number' in 400,000 employees, facing outsourcing to other countries, never actually seeing your team apart from their icon photo in a conference call, having to phone a helpdesk every time you want to send a parcel, having to get every project you complete checked and finalised by hundreds of processes and procedures, it can sometimes feel like your individuality, thoughts and suggestions and even your personality can be a little bit squashed....

However, the experience was of course, priceless and an amazing opportunity, which I (hope) grasped with both hands and got the most out of. Even in a bad situation (not saying that it was a bad situation) you can always learn and grow through the things you experience.

However, I think I have almost made my mind up- I would like to work in a small- medium enterprise, or at least a highly competitive industry! I also think, for me, it's important to market something which I am passionate about and can relate to.

So therefore, this summer I am undertaking an internship at Vet's Kitchen in the marketing department (consisting of 2 people) which is an start-up pet food company based in Swindon, their products are sold in Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda and online. It couldn't be more different to marketing at IBM which is exactly what I wanted, a chance to try something completely different and a chance to show my skills to a small team of people and to actually have some responsibility, and mostly- to make a difference.

As the business is B2C, I am also getting the chance to try types of marketing activity that I would never had been able to within a B2B organisation. Vet's Kitchen literally do every type of marketing campaign I could ever think of- which is an amazing opportunity for me to gain experience in all of them! They are big on social media, and I am basically running all of their social media channels at the moment, advertising- print, radio, online etc, events (I'm going to exhibit at one of their road shows in a few weeks), email marketing, public relations, web design, packaging design, sales promotion, direct mail, merchandise...... I've literally done the lot! I've only been here 2 weeks and already I am learning the ins-and-outs of the organisation, how it operates, and how the company has grown and how the marketing can be used to attract new customers, raise awareness and ultimately gain market share.

I am also able to make my own suggestions and plan my own marketing activity (an amazing opportunity!!) and if I think something would work, I can suggest it AND request budget! There is so much freedom, flexibility and creativity- everything I wanted from working in marketing.

I'm really excited to carry out the rest of my internship and hopefully learn lots before deciding what kind of graduate job within marketing I would like to apply for.

Of course- everyone has their own desires and different opinions of work, I think any experience is a good experience, again even if this makes you realise what you DON'T want to do.... I know I don't want to work in a B2B technology organisation and I thank IBM for providing me with such a rewarding experience that helped me realise this! I would highly recommend a placement year there to anyone!

Opinions are entirely my own!

Steph

A Christmassy Marketing Day in Southbank!

Hi guys, sorry it's been so long! I can't believe I haven't blogged in an entire month. Will try and keep content consistent from now on!

I've been super busy recently and I can't wait to tell you all the stuff I've been up to!

Starting with last week, I went up to London to attend the 2nd IBM Marketing Placement day in London, I blogged about the first one earlier this year!

The event was held in the Client Centre at IBM's Southbank, London office. This is usually where we host clients and host events and meetings with them. It's a really nice office and much nicer than the Portsmouth one- so it's nice to get out of there, even if it is just for a day ;-)

 

I like it when all the Marketing Placement students get together as we do  fairly often, I've made some good friends from the IBM locations all over the country! The day was mostly focused on IBM's brand and how marketing and communications strategies can positively affect this.

Firstly, we met Alison Orsi who is Head of Marketing, Communication and Citizenship for IBM UK & Ireland- this means she is my bosses, bosses, boss! It was really exciting to hear how she had got to the position in which she is in now and how she never even planned to work in Marketing to begin with! She told us about an IBM advertising campaign in the 90's featuring the pink panter and Johnathan Ross.....?? Not really fitting with the IBM brand we know now!

Softening the corporate image may have been an objective then- but now IBM's Marketing is a lot more targeted and they are much more considerate and thoughtful when making marketing decisions. She focused her presentation on social, valued content creation, SEO and mobile marketing. An interesting thought from the day was the fact that the strategy seems to be shifting from paid-owned-earned towards owned-earned-paid.

Secondly, we had Tony Chapman-Dawe from Strand Communication deliver a presentation on how to write better Marketing text. I found this particularly interesting because of my interest in Journalism- it kind of reminded me of being back in an English lesson!!

He spoke about advertisers being able to grip people in 9 words and how difficult this can be in getting a message across, but also that this is a scope for immense creativity. He presented us with examples from The Economist:

This spark some thought as he noted that brands need to think carefully about the language they use and also what content is actually relevant and of some value to the target audience. He also taught us about the structure of powerpoints and how to create useful and eye catching language. His main theory was that any marketing message should contain Structure, Facts, Examples and Brevity. A great lesson which I will be enforcing in the future! It makes you think about the way that brands craft tweets, in tweets you only have 140 characters to get your message across- therefore they have to be snappy, relevant and concise.

Then, we had Bill Jinks, who project managed IBM's presence at Wimbledon for the last few years. He came to speak to us about the work he had done and how we might like to get involved in working there next year with IBM. The stuff we do at Wimbledon is awesome and far too much to narrow down into one blog post- so check out the website if you would like to know more here.

Then we had a brand quality workshop from 2 members of Marketing who work on the graduate scheme. They spoke to us about the IBM Brand and how it is represented in terms of looking, sounding, thinking and performing like IBM. We also got chance to have a look and dissect IBM's current brand strategy.

We then had an IBM speaker; Mark Devlin spoke to us about IBM's history and the way the IBM brand has been affected and shaped over time. An interesting concept he mentioned was that IBM has never had a figure head like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs to represent it's brand image, instead of having this one person to look to, IBM is represented by it's employees who have their own name aka IBMers!

Overall it was a great day with some great people- afterwards we got to check out the Southbank Christmas Markets and then we were treated to a Chinese in Leicester Square!!

Ever changing

Ok, so been a massive week at uni this week. Exams, assignments and today our group product pitch presentation which we have been working on for MONTHS and I am so glad it's over. I hate group work, not going to lie I like to be in control especially when it concerns my own grades and levels of input to my work. Anyway I think our product pitch went really well and I think developing a new product and pitching it is something beneficial from uni that you normally wouldn't do through literature reviews or exams. That's why I love my course! Lot's of variety....

Sad news about HMV going into administration this week, a truely British brand. However I remember saying a long time ago how they needed to up their game and develop a new strategy in order to remain current or else they were going to fall under..... touche. They never changed in order to suit customer demand and therefore they were never going to compete. Personally, I haven't been in a HMV store in years and would have no enjoyment in doing so.

And from another organisation crushed by the rise in technology, as comes a further development in technology. This one interests me as I love social networking as much as the next person.... However, I have started to use facebook less and less recently as I feel as though a lot of it is just marketing (ironic I know) and less about the 'social' aspect. However, I am becoming addicted to twitter. I feel that although twitter does incorporate marketing and brand promotion through its trends etc, it allows people to be social through doing so. For example, every night without fail there is a TV show trending which allows people to join in on discussing the programme or not if they choose not too. I feel twitter uses this interaction in a way that facebook is unable to. Twitter is definately less in your face and 100% more tailored to individuals, not only through demographics and people you 'follow' but also increasingly using twitter means your topics of interest or talking points become tailored into products or services you may be interested in.

Anyway, back to my initial point. Facebook have now launched a search engine or a "graph search" as they are calling it; it allows you to search your 'network' for images, statuses etc. which I think may be slightly more like twitter in that you can search for things which interest you and sort of tailor your experience with the site. So for example, I was recently trying to think of places to go on holiday and was struggling finding photos of people that had been to marbella, cancun etc. however the new feature would allow me to directly search "friends who have been to marbella" which I do think is going to be interesting and am looking forward to checking the feature out! Maybe see if facebook can make a comeback! Also interested to see how my facebook friends react!

Been working on my internship loads this week too! Been contacting review sites and bloggers ahead of the launch next week! This has been the most exciting element so far I think as I love reaching out to other companies and making a pitch! Also signed my contract with IBM! I am now a demand programmes specialist!!

Steph