Placement Report

My Experience as a Marketing Intern at Dundee International Women’s Centre

By: Caroline Brysting

27th March 2016

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the DIWC for providing me with the opportunity to a position in the field of marketing. Specifically, I would like to thank Parven Kuar, Community manager at DIWC, for taking the time to teach me invaluable marketing techniques, for answering all my questions and for helping me integrate and learn about the centre and it’s business operations. I am grateful to have worked with staff at DIWC who have all been lovely and welcomed me as a member in their office for the past 8 weeks.

2

Contents

Description Page number

Acknowledgements

Section 1: Introduction 4

Section 2: Reflection on Internship 5

Section 3: Conclusions and Next Steps 7

References 8

Appendices 9-11

3

Section 1: Introduction

As part of the Internship Module, I accepted a placement as a Marketing Intern at the Dundee International Women’s Centre (DIWC). The job description of a Marketing Intern at DIWC was to help promote the Mobile Crèche Service provided by DIWC online and offline. The Mobile Crèche Service is DIWC’s main form of income and also has potential to be utilized by a larger range of local organisations as well as private clients in Dundee. Therefore, my job was to help increase awareness and clearly market the services the Mobile Crèche has to offer. Since I study an MA International Business with Marketing, I felt that eight weeks of working closely with Parven Kuar, Community Manager at DIWC, would provide me with the opportunity to experience working with marketing as a profession and contribute to my course and future career development. Moreover, when I read the centre’s mission statement; “To address the needs of women, with an emphasis on those from black and ethnic minority communities: To promote and create opportunities for women’s social, political and economic inclusion, and for the advancement of education and employment”(DIWC, 2016) I was convinced that DIWC would be a work environment in which I would integrate well socially because I speak four languages and have experienced integration in societies in six different nations throughout my life, so I can familiarize with members and staff at the centre. Overall, the following report is divided into two further sections. “Section 2” reflects on tasks and projects I have worked and evaluates my contribution to marketing the mobile crèche, referring to published work in the Appendix section. Additionally, I move on to identify obstacles I encountered and evaluate how I overcame them, commenting on my shortcomings, developed skills and achievements. Finally, in Section 3, this report will describe how my work experience as a Marketing Intern at DIWC has affected my university course decisions and future career path.

4

Section 2: Reflection on Internship

At DIWC I have generally been engaged with online marketing of the Mobile Crèche Service, however, my job has included a variety of daily assignments. For my main project, I worked with the Mobile Crèche website, mobilecrèchedundee.org/, developing the blog department (Appendix A). Working collaboratively with Parven, we identified areas for growth for the website, discovering that mobilecrèchedundee.org/ is a website on which people spend an average of 30 seconds on the front page only, before exiting again. Consequently, I designed and wrote four blogs on wordpress.org, learning the marketing technique to use words in the blog that would create online matches for flexible childcare in Dundee. I quickly learned how to use Google Adwords that helped me identify key words typed into the Google search engine. My efforts with the blog have contributed to DIWC’s two long-term aims with the mobile crèche; to increase visits on our front page and blog page and to move the mobile crèche website closer to the first page of the Google search engine for flexible childcare in Scotland. This I know because Wordpress statistics show visitors now move on to browse other pages of the blog. The assignment process was challenging and time consuming, but very educational as I had never previously worked with online media Wordpress or Piktochart in writing blogs and nor had I ever used Pixabay as a source of downloading online images either.

On the other hand, I have also contributed to the short-term aim of the mobile crèche marketing which was to inform organisations in a quick and concise manner of the booking process and benefits of having a mobile crèche. This goal has been fulfilled by two Infographics blog entitled “How to book a mobile crèche” and “FAQs: 5 min guide to Dundee’s local mobile crèche” (Appendices B and C). My second marketing project to parents and target organisations was based partially offline. It firstly involved creatively developing the old mobile crèche physical brochure. Together with Parven, we discussed size, format and content ideas. I then wrote the content of the brochure, creatively tailoring information available on the website to inform parents and target organisations, a task I enjoyed a lot. I also wrote a draft e-mail to send to local enterprises and venues marketing the mobile crèche.

Although I have managed to complete a variety of tasks and assignments, I encountered a few personal obstacles that reduced the quality of my work in one of my assignments. The first of my weaknesses that my Insights profile has helped me to pinpoint was that I tend to become too excited and “leap before I look”. For example, when I was given a list of tasks to be completed during week 7, I began my task to write an email to organisations marketing the mobile crèche, with no brainstorming or planning. This caused me to fail to complete the e-mail using the marketing techniques I had learned at DIWC and although I finished within a short time period, I wrote an e-mail that was too extensive – one that a busy events manager would never take the time to read. I felt very embarrassed that another member of staff, Laura, allocated her time to edit the e-mail before sending it out. Nevertheless, I managed to improve on this shortcoming at every single following session where I have managed to create two infographics and publish them on the mobile crèche blog. I spent an extra

5

10-20 minutes researching, planning what to include and familiarizing myself with Infographics before beginning. Although I spent 5 hours on the FAQs Infographic, the resulting Infographics were well-structured, creative, vibrant and concise, which both Parven and I are very satisfied with (Appendices B and C).

Another obstacle I encountered was a set back to my schedule at DIWC due to my illness one week and Parven’s illness the following week. This required extra effort for Parven and I to collaboratively organise and plan the next couple weeks in order to make up for eight hours of work lost at DIWC. However, I was motivated to keep up to date with assignments at DIWC. I communicated with Parven over e-mail on a daily basis and utilized the extra time during my two weeks off to write a blog for International Women’s Day. I also took the initiative to work with the upcoming tasks I was aware of and allocated time to prepare for the next sessions by developing ideas, editing my previous blog posts to perfection and familiarizing myself with Infographics. The outcome of my own organisation, dedication and initiative was that there were no deadlines and no assignments I failed to complete due to illness.

The final smaller obstacle I encountered was my lack of experience with IT including online sources of social and creative media. This was a relatively small obstacle as I personally feel that it was easily overcome through extra communication and use of time on Parven’s and my behalf. For example, Parven spent 5 minutes running through the functions, tools and widgets of Wordpress, Pixabay, GoogleAds and Infographics before I began my assignments that required the media. Personally, I used my energetic nature and positive attitude to stay motivated and eager to improve my IT skills, occasionally using time out of the centre to familiarize myself with functions. I also used my communication skills to ask appropriate questions to all members of staff at any point I encountered a difficulty, which developed teamwork, debate and personal confidence.

Overall, the internship has helped me to identify my weaknesses in the work environment but it has also provided me with the opportunity to find and practice strategies to improve them. I have also utilized my key strengths as a marketing intern at DIWC by initiating new activities such as the idea to work on an assignment from home, which also highlights my ability to see options and alternatives and to stay positive. Lastly, I have enhanced my communication skills and team-working skills in a professional work environment from listening to advice, putting it into practice, and learning from my mentor, Parven.

6

Section 3: Conclusions and Next Steps

To conclude, I feel that this internship at DIWC has been an invaluable experience for me in terms of personal and professional skills as described in Section 2. As a whole, I have found that I enjoy working in a social environment such as the one in the staff office at DIWC where we all sit and work in the same room. This allows for appropriate jokes and the ability to ask one another openly for advice and discuss on-going issues in the enterprise. I will take with me my personal insights profile, describing me as a team player as I have also been able to work comfortably and efficiently with a mentor and with other staff in a team. Thus, for future job opportunities, I will remember that I work well in a position that requires teamwork and creative discussion on short term but also long-term assignments. Concerning my future career prospects, I have gained enough insight to a position as a marketing employee and a position as a community manager at DIWC to know that I do no longer wish to pursue a career in marketing. Although I was convinced that I wanted to change my degree to MA International Business with Marketing and pursue a career within this field before I began the internship, I have come to realize that I do not enjoy working with 95% of my time with online sources, which is where marketing in the 21 st

century is based on an increasing level. Although I work well with excel and am happy to use computers for referencing, emails and logging purposes, I simply do not enjoy that my main object of contact is with the computer. On the other hand, I have discovered that I enjoy working with others and I have a thirst to engage with hands-on work and direct communication with clients. I also enjoy making decisions and like to see an outcome when I feel strongly about my own efforts and ideas. Therefore, I believe that a job where I am able to make final decisions and realise my own ideas developed with a team is something for me. My next steps will be to choose some more dynamic business modules to do with events organisation and to acquire a few business internships within the fashion industry or the pharmaceutical industry.

7

References

"Our Vision - Dundee International Women's Centre." Dundee International Womens Centre. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2016. <http://diwc.co.uk/our-vision>.

Appendices

8

Appendix A: Online Blogs I have created and published.Source: mobilecrèchedundee.org/blog/

Appendix B: Infographic “How to Book a Mobile Crèche”.

9

Source: http://mobilecrechedundee.org/how-to-book-a-mobile-creche/

Appendix C: Infographic “FAQs: 5 min guide through Dundee’s local mobile crèche”

10

Source: http://mobilecrechedundee.org/faqs-5-min-information-guide-to-dundees-local-riseshine-mobile-childcare/

11