As a student at Brock University, I chose to do an internship working with HUGHESANDCO this summer. Working here as an intern for the last three months has been the best learning experience during my time at Brock so far. Sitting in a marketing class and learning from a textbook is great, and through class discussions I felt like I had an okay handle on what marketing would involve once I left Brock. Then I came to HUGHESANDCO.
For the most part, when digital marketing came up, students didn’t really understand it, making guesses as to how to apply digital marketing to a case study based on what they’d seen before. Being able to work with people who know what works and aren’t just guessing has been a huge learning experience.
Not only have I come to understand more of what actually works any why, I better understand how much work is actually involved to be successful in strategic marketing. The first few days of my internship I felt a little bit like I was a step behind where I should have been and didn’t have the knowledge I needed to be working here. The reality was that the way that I had been taught marketing was not the way it’s done here.
As a student, I would be given a term or a concept, and I’d do my best to understand it. “Understanding” came mostly with being able to recite the definition of the term and applying it to the textbook provided example. When I’m asked what I do here at the agency, I can do more than list off the tasks I complete in a day. I can also explain why I do them, what purpose they serve for the clients we work with.
When learning about marketing in school, it seemed so focused on the specifics of building a marketing campaign that I never gave much thought to what a marketing department or team meant for a company. Working here changed that perspective. Simply by being in the same room with people who are frequently discussing how what we do is positively impacting clients has solidified it in my head.
Allie and the team frequently bring back into focus the why of what is being done, and if I hadn’t been here for the last three months I never would have understood what a crucial part of successful marketing that is.