Tenth Week August 8-10

A shorter week, but so far to go before I am finished!!

Monday

I began my week working on the project I hadn't finished from the week before...gathering the playstation editoria calendars. I received some in from reps in the mail and added those to my stack. It took most of my morning, but I was proud to hand a useful resource to my team when I finished. In the afternoon I completed some positioning for the ABC team from 2004. This team is sooo far behind on their work. It is a good thing they are hiring another assistant because it is obvious they need someone else to get all they need done in a timely manner. I was only glad I could be of some help!! I also continued retreiving checking copies for epson.

Tuesday

I began cleaning out all of my files and folders from my desk in the morning (so sad!) I also began compiling my work for a portfolio and trying to retreive information from our company website (which can only be accessed through the network) as well as through my human resources manager. Later I went to a print status meeting (where they go through all they need to get done.) My most exciting bout of the day came when the supervisor of the team needed my help (this is the first time I had worked with her.) The supervisor and assistant manager were putting together a mini-media plan for the newly aquired Hilton account. To do so, they were getting in media kits from all the publications they were interested in. I got to help organize all of the different documents necessary for them to help make the decision. These included a proposal, two audit bureau of circulations documents, edit and closing date calendars, rate cards, and two copies of the publication itself. After this was through I alphebetized what was left of the media kits and publications.

Wednesday

Wednesday I continued cleaning out my area. I attended a luncheon with bauer publishing that my group was putting on. Bauer basically was arguing that they are the fastest growing publication company and they would soon overtake giants like conde nast and meredith corp. It was a lot to swallow given the reputations of the latter two companies, but they presented numbers to prove their point. I still don't see many OMD clients advertising in publications such as "Life and Style" however. They just dont have the kind of credibility that major products are looking for in a magazine. I can see how the ABC client would want to advertise their, because entertainment is the point of most bauer publications, but it seemed like the presentation was a waste because they already had ABC as a customer and they weren't going to grab any more from the OMD lineup. Later I had my evaluation from OMD (different from the one from AU,) which I wasn't so pleased about and didn't feel truly reflected the time and effort I put into this internship. I will discuss this more in my privat email to you. I spent the rest of the day offsiting for the ABC team because I felt I earned more appreciation for my work from them. I did, however, spend the end of my day writing seperate goodbye emails to all eight members of my team telling them I enjoyed working with them this summer (which I most definetly did!)

I was definetly ready to get out of LA and stop working 40 hours a week for free, but I would miss the people, my fellow interns, the fun environment, and most importantly, the magazines.

Ninth Week August 1-5

The ninth week was kind of a blur. On Thursday of this week (August 4th,) we were to present our final intern project on Axe body spray. Most of our free time was spent putting the presentation together, making last minute changes, collecting visuals for our presentation, and practicing the presentaion. Given this fact, I will not lay out what I did each day this week. Instead I will give a general overview.

I continued my work with the ABC team this week. Most of the help they needed involved checking over estimates, paperclipping them together, and filing them in their correct binder. This was not exactly the greatest or most interesting project, but at least I started to get a sense of the different markets ABC advertises in and how much they spend in each market. I also did a project in the middle of the week that involved marking out the different competition in a slew of publications ABC advertises for. Basically I was given a giant box of magazines and I had to color code the ads with flags based on which competitive network ad I found. ABC's competition is as folows: NBC, CBS, FOX, and UPN. I couldn't complain...I love looking at magazines, especially the celebrity gossip kind that ABC advertises in!!!

While work with the ABC group was picking up, work with my group was slowing down. I continued working mostly for the playstation/epson people. I was still on the hunt for checking copies from the 2005 fiscal year for epson. Most of the magazines I was getting in from reps were scrapbooking publications. I had no idea there was about 10 different magazines only devoted to scrapbooking!! Another interesting fact: epson is a japanese company, so they run on a Japanese fiscal year. It took me awhile to realize that their fiscal ran from April 05-March 06.

I did some more positioning and filing of Insertion Orders for Nissan/Infiniti as well and completed another round of summaries for the consumer publication updates that the print group sends out to the entire office. I also attended my groups own "emerging technologies training." They presented facts on print including terminology and the different types of inserts an advertiser can choose to produce, as well as some of the things that they do. It upset me that they didn't mention me once in their presentation, however, and didn't include me in putting it together.

The highlight of my week had to be the axe presentation we gave to a room of 30 people at lunch time on Thursday. We had all put in so many hours and were sooo nervous. When it went off without a hitch, we were all so releived. The only feedback we had was good feedback and we were told that out of all of the intern presentations they had seen, ours was head and soldiers above the rest (a copy of the final intern presentation is included in my final notebook.) What felt the best is that, save about two interns, we all worked together as a team and divided up the work equally among ourselves. The only sad part of our day was the food meant for our lunch was definetly gone when we got out of the meeting (some people from the ad agency must have scavenged it!) but we took a long lunch instead and went out to celebrate.

On friday I did not take my last summer friday and instead came in to work on a project for the playstation/epson team that I had been putting off until then. I basically had to compile all the 2005 editorial calendars for playstation, which sounds easy enough if they were all sitting right there, but they weren't. I took some from various binders they had, but most I had to find through the SRDS website or simply by calling or contacting the reps. And there are so many playstation publications! I would say I hunted down about one hundred and fifty different editorial calendars. This project took so long that I took the whole day Friday and still was not finished with it!

And only three more days next week to go...

Eighth Week July 25-29

Wow. This week was my busiest week ever. I hardly had time to stop and think.

Monday

In the morning I did some "important" filing for the ABC teams. The estimates for Radio and Spot had just been faxed over, and because of the tendency for these things to get lost, the ABC team usually trusts no one to do this filing for them. They were a person short, however, and gave me the work. I learned that even they double check their own work a million times (not just intern work.) I had to go through the stack and check everything off. Then it could be filed. Later I was sent on a menial intern task to get an ice cream cake for someone's birthday. I didn't mind as it gave me a chance to get out of the office and allowed me to enjoy the cake along with them. My print team was missing me so when I stopped by for a few tasks, they gave me a slew of odds-and-ends to pick up including calling reps, reviewing magazines, summaries, postitioning, and filing. This had me going non-stop until the end of the day and there was so much on my plate I had to stop by to give my team a status report. Luckily I finished most of my tasks.

Tuesday

I spent the morning calling reps (not my favorite thing!) to search for more missing publications. I am beginning to get a sense for the exasperation my group has at keeping track of all their magazine checking copies and then hounding reps when they dont receive them. There has to be a better system for this then their current one. If there were more room in the office, maybe they wouldn't have to throw every magazine they receive into the nearest bin and then forget about it until it comes time to fill out the positioning and they can no longer find it. Too many reps have told me that they have sent the missing publication, that they already sent it, they always sent it, and it makes no sense that we need another. Its not too fun or responisble to respond "well then we lost it." But I don't beleive there is enough room in this office for a detailed filing system, so the bins and angry reps will have to do. I did more filing of IO's for Playstation and Infiniti in the morning as well.

As the afternoon approached I began receiving publications from reps I had called that morning and began entering them into positioning charts.

An interesting tid-bit of information from the day: we occasionally recieve e-mails titled "media spotlight" which outline different things OMDers have done. Apparantly OMD's newest show of excellence came when a team from North America at a media conference came up with the idea to have Alka-Seltzer sponsor eating contests. The client jumped at the idea and now Alka-Seltzer and the international federation of competitive eating have a partnership.

In the afternoon I met with the interns for a long meeting to try and push out the logistics of our presentation.

Wednesday

I continued updating a chart of missing publications as I was receiving checking copies from reps. These take forever to come in! Its amazing how many reps..who should be fighting for your advertising space..end up forgetting to send the book or simply postponing it. I went to another media training weds on the variety of outdoor resources we have at our fingertips. It seems like the major OMD offices are really trying to push their non-strategy groups and I am curious as to why.

Thursday

We strolled into our last intern lunch and learn before our presentation. I had been working on my part of the project all morning. It is amazing how many last minute changes we were making. At the lunch and learn we went over how to write a resume, what HR managers look for, and tips for interviews. All the information was very useful and I came out feeling like I was one step ahead of the game. Later I helped edit some of the written parts of our plan (including a poem and "a day in the life" of our target. I also started working on retreiving some missing publications for the ABC team. These were harder to retreive. Reps of the kinds of publications ABC advertises in aren't as prompt as others and some, like YM which recently folded, are just uncontactable

Friday

Unlike all my other fridays, this friday was very eventful. It seemed like it was crunch time for many teams. I had more summaries to write from the Min and Delaney reports, I was busy getting flow chart information in for our project (so we could have a final copy to show to our supervisors for editing,) and to top it off, at around 3:15 another intern and I were given a crazy project of entering in data for the ABC team. They needed it for a meeting at 4:00 and our task was to get as much done as possible by 3:45. The numbers were simple enough to understand (TRP's from radio stations in different markets across the country) it was just a lot of information in such a small amount of time. It gave me a sense of how crazy the business can be! The project left us sweating..but we got most of it in on time, so I felt good about it afterword. A nice end to my friday, but it left me exhausted.