My Intrepid Marketing Internship Experience
This summer I had the privilege of interning at Intrepid Marketing Group. Interning at Intrepid was my first real and meaningful work experience of my adult life. I had some experience with marketing in the classes I have taken at Duke University, but the experiences that I had here at Intrepid cannot be replicated in the classroom. What I enjoyed most about interning at Intrepid is hard to narrow down into one choice, but there are a few things that stand out in my mind.
From the aspect of work experience, I enjoyed learning the practical skills and actions that marketers perform on a daily basis. These skills include writing a proper media pitch, writing blog posts, creating media lists, creating social media calendars, writing a marketing plan and a whole lot of research. Although none of these actions are particularly difficult, it was important for me to see what marketers do on a daily basis and realize the amount of time and effort it takes to complete these actions. It was very beneficial to have my work critiqued by the staff at Intrepid because they used their work experience to show how I could improve my work in the future.
Being that Intrepid is a small firm, I got to see the inner workings of how all of the staff works. It was interesting to hear a lot of their business conversations, and, even more so, it was very impressive to see how hard they work. This really gave me a good idea of what it takes to be successful in marketing, and it showed how a marketing firm operates.
If I had to narrow down what I enjoyed most into one choice, I guess I have to say I enjoyed the people at Intrepid the most. Like I said earlier, interning at Intrepid was my first real world work experience, and with that being said, I was extremely nervous. I was so nervous that I drove a half an hour to Raleigh from Durham to scout out where the building was located so I could make sure I wouldn’t get lost and be late on orientation day. When I began the internship, I felt silly for feeling so nervous because of how welcoming the whole staff was. They went out of their way to stop and talk to me, whether it was about football, what I was doing this weekend, or funny stories from the weekend prior. After my first day, I instantly felt so much more comfortable and excited to come in and work. Being excited to work is very important to me because my time at Duke is coming to an end in a year and a half and I’ve spent a lot of time stressing about work life. I was always scared of not enjoying work in the future, but Interning at Intrepid really gave me a great outlook on how enjoyable work can be, and this solidified the fact that I definitely want to pursue marketing when I graduate from college.
I will offer two pieces of advice for future interns. Firstly, come into work with the mindset that you are going improve in a certain aspect every day. For example, one day I came into work and told myself that today I’m going to research how to write the perfect media pitch, and on another day I told myself I was going to research how marketing firms increase brand awareness for their clients. Each day I was able to leave with a great feeling of accomplishment and improvement. Second, take advantage of asking questions. I knew coming into this internship that I lacked experience and I was brand new. I tried to take advantage of being new and inexperienced by asking as many questions as I could because you are only new for so long. After a certain point, you are expected to know most of these things. There were many occasions where I would go into an office and ask any question that was on my mind about the projects I worked on. It was always very enlightening because I got to hear real world experiences as answers.
Interning at intrepid was definitely the highlight of my summer, and I am very appreciative for how much I learned and how supportive the staff is!
