Week Six: 12 - 16 July

It is week six of the first Brunswick Internship programme for 2010. The interns talk us through what they got up to day by day.

This is the seventh blog entry from the 2010 Brunswick Six,
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By Brunswick Interns

Monday 12 July (Ataur)

The week began with some beautiful weather, and I was in a jubilant mood as Spain had brought the 2010 World Cup to an end with a deserved win. As it was dress down day, I came in with my Barcelona shirt with the goal scorer’s name, Andreas Iniesta, printed on the back as a tribute to a wonderful footballer.

As we had some free time before our session with Sarah began, we completed our daily blogs and worked on the various assignments we still had to finish. At around 11.30am, we were given our weekly quiz, which was a quick test on some of the key points we covered the previous week.

Today’s session was on interviews, and as Sarah is a very experienced interviewer, having previously worked at Taylor Bennett, we all made the most of the opportunity. We spoke about some of our best and worst experiences in interviews and how we dealt with them. Sarah told us some of the most common interview questions that always come up and what interviewers look for when they ask certain questions, and how to answer them.

It was for me one of the most beneficial sessions so far, and this, together with a previous talk on interviews by Chantal at Taylor Bennett last week, has left us all much better prepared for any future interviews.

After lunch, Chris did a session on event management. We were split in to pairs and given a scenario to plan for; a results announcement for breakfast, launch of a mobile phone company in an art gallery and an all day training events for all the managers at a mobile phone company. We shared our plans with the group and were given feedback on planning the event.

Tuesday 13 July (Akila)

It was an early start for most of the interns on Tuesday morning as most of us arrived at the office an hour or so before our scheduled start: this week is important for everyone as we have to give our presentations to respective representatives from Taylor Bennett, Brunswick and others.

The Tuesday morning session is our only free session this week so everyone worked hard to try and get most of the work done today. Given we had problems with printing and other mishaps on previous occasions, nobody wants to risk leaving it to the last minute. We were all so busy with what we were doing that most of us forgot about lunch and instead concentrated on our work!

In the afternoon Chris Cooke gave a seminar on of publishing, offering a glimpse into the ins and outs of that world, and the way the industry operates. When the afternoon session was over we were straight back to our desks; most of us put in a late night to try and complete the presentation for the week.

Wednesday 14 July (Brenda)

Today we all met at 9.45am to get to the Taylor Bennett office for a session on job searching with Faith and Jim. I truly admire Faith’s spirit; she is so determined and direct and hugely driven, an inspirational person with an abundance of positive energy; many of her attributes are so necessary, I feel, if one is to succeed.

The session helped us to narrow down further the kind of jobs we’re going to apply for after the internship: we had a look at more CVs (always good for visualising a career pathway to that top spot!) and spoke more in depth about agency and in-house operations.

The second half of the day was spent at the Observer; this was definitely one of my favourite trips thus far. There we met Ruairdh Nicoll, for a tour and and a chat about how he got into journalism and how the Observer has changed since he started working there. Akila (our future journalist) was extra enthusiastic about this visit, and asked for advice about how to get in to the industry. As he’s lready gained experience working with a local paper, Ruaridh was more than happy to give Akila an opportunity to gain more experience at the Observer.

After speaking with Ruaridh, we had the fantastic opportunity to sit in on a political conference; it was almost like watching a live debate show with people offering their opinions about the release of Peter Mandelson’s memoirs.

Thursday 15 July (Keosha)

Overall, I was excited about today: first the trip to PR week, and then Chris’s session on social media – a good way to start and end the day.

Our visit to PR week was one of the trips I was most looking forward to, although the journey to Hammersmith meant tackling rush hour, which is something I’m still not used to. Once inside we met Danny Rodgers (editor) Kate Magee (journalist) and were later joined by Simon Lee (publisher). They each gave us a brief overview of what their roles are within the magazine, then Danny, wanting to make sure that all of our queries were answered led an informal Q&A session. This allowed us to gather useful information about how the industry works; our time there was well spent and I found the topics of discussion highly interesting.

In the afternoon, Chris delivered his session on social media, and it made me realise just how much I was previously unaware of: the fact, for example, that the biggest media website in the world, with regards to traffic, is the BBC, and that – possibly unsurprisingly – the biggest website in the world is Google! Chris’s session, once again, was thoroughly enjoyable for me and left me with some key leads I am keen to research further.

Friday 16 July am (Thandi)

This morning we came in bright and early to put the final touches on our presentations. Brenda and I have been working together, and had encountered some printing problems, so we met up at 8am to sort things out. When we got into the office everyone seemed really nervous; this was because they had been told that a couple of people from Taylor Bennett, Brunswick and UEL would come to see us present. We practised our presentations and although I felt prepared beforehand, once it came to it and I had eight people sitting in front of me, I became extremely nervous. We all managed to get through our presentations, but I realised that I really will have to work on my nerves for next week, especially because we have Lord Chadlington and Chris Sattherwaite from Chime and Huntsworth coming to watch us present information on their own companies. I look forward to the challenge!

Friday 16 July pm (Nahidur)

After the grilling presentations in the morning, we had a session at Brunswick with Borbala and Roberta. The first session was with Borbala, who works for the research arm of Brunswick, and who spoke to us about the work they do for their clients, and showed us some case studies. We were tasked to find out which particular stakeholders were targeted for each case study. The research session was interesting to say the least, as we got to see another side of the Brunswick group.

We then had a session with Roberta, which involved acting out role-plays: we worked in pairs, with one person playing a journalist, and the other taking on the role of PR exec or CEO, a process which had some of us in hysterics! We found that it was easier to act as a journalist than it was to act a PR exec, as the latter is under pressure not spill the full story… laughter and acting skills aside, the session was actually very helpful, as we were able to explore difficult scenarios that are faced by PR executives on a daily basis.