Life of an Intern

I’ve always wanted to be a media planner and buyer so when I walked into evok advertising for an interview – I knew I had to nail it. I guess if you’ve done the interview process before, you know how nerve-racking it is – arriving really early, sweaty palms, wondering if your resume looks good enough, using manners no southern woman has witnessed since the 1950s. I imagine it’s probably the same for everyone… It’s true – the interview process can be daunting. Just imagine the public relations manager and media buyer asking you questions – some off-the-wall and others you’ve been preparing for since you chose your major. Is your answer crazy or sane enough? Have they heard these answers a thousand times already from other candidates? When I got home, I replayed the interview in my head like a cassette (yes I’m old enough to know what those are), rewinding and fast-forwarding to the toughest questions. I sent my follow-up letter, did my due diligence and two weeks later, the public relations manager called me with the news. I’ve never crossed my fingers so hard in my life. Then she finally said it, “We’d like to offer you our spring internship position as our PR/Media intern.” So, cool – I’m now the newest intern at evok advertising. A fancy title follows – Public Relations/Media Coordinator – even though I know I’m going to be doing just about anything and everything asked of me. Surprisingly, that’s not the case though – one thing I learned real quick, was to throw that image of a stereotypical coffee retrieving, brown-nosing, know-it-all intern out the window. You’re with the big boys now and to learn is only the beginning. A few broad responsibilities of my internship at evok included the following:

• Pitching stories to the media / following-up
• Collecting digital and hardcopy clips
• Putting in creative tasks / interactive tasks
• Writing trafficking instructions for radio, billboards and TV
• Uploading blogs to the company website
• Managing social media for a variety of clients
• Researching upcoming media trends
• Researching media contacts
• Developing media plans & rationales

Being an intern within a full-service advertising agency like evok will surely open your eyes. I find that before stepping into an agency, we understand things only as the television and the media portray them. In fact, we have no idea as to what happens inside a genuine “think tank.” This is no 1960s Mad Men television episode where Lucky Strike cigarette smoke fills the air and whiskey is downed like water. No real life Donald Draper seemingly spurs some sort of last minute campaign slogan that’s going to bring the agency to the brink of fame. As an intern who watches the inner workings of an agency, evok works as a team to understand each client’s needs completely, rather than rely on one person to spearhead the entire process. The skilled team at evok works in-sync and studies their client and its industry inside and out. Sometimes they even show up at the client’s business to be a customer or an employee for day. The research is immense, but because of what they put in on the front-end, they can develop groundbreaking ideas that lead to quality results, which are tracked and revised as needed to strengthen each campaign. The top five things I learned at evok:

• No client is better or more important than the other
• Take on whatever sort of work is asked of you, no matter how far out of your comfort zone
• Stay organized, I promise it’ll help in the long run
• Be confident
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions

This is how evok separates itself from other agencies: ideas. work. results. It’s the slogan the agency lives and dies by, because an agency like evok doesn’t divert from their principles when working with clients or with their team. I’m proud to write on my resume that I interned at evok advertising, because it has given me the chance to witness an agency in which principles guide the way business is done, where clients are treated more as friends then as just run-of-the-mill business associates. Interning at evok, you can be sure you’ll learn skills completely out of your comfort range but these only build your character. And everyone here won’t skip the chance to tell you that.