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.