Ahhh… Summer break. Long gone are the days of sitting by the pool, ice cream cones, sleep-away camp, and summer reading. Summer break for COM students means incredible internships in cities all over the world ON TOP OF all the fun quintessential summer activities.
I spent the summer interning at DigitasLbi in their Chicago office. Not only did I get to work at a global and just plain cool agency, I got to spend my last summer (I am a senior… How did that happen?!) at home, which was the icing on the cake.
As the New Business intern, my responsibilities included developing internal competitive analyses for potential clients, creating client repositories that focused on media headlines, assisting in creative briefs and the designing of pitch decks. My team was amazing (shout out to my manager Heather!) and they really trusted me with big time responsibilities. I was so happy that my coursework at BU had really prepared me for all the surprises this real time agency threw at me. I felt extremely prepared and felt like I fit in immediately! (Thank you Prof. Cakebread and AdLab!)
In addition to my departmental responsibilities, the internship program at Digitas included two intern projects. The first was to our internal company life team and my group created Destination: Digitas, a study abroad type program where employees could work abroad at any of Digitas’ global offices! This was so much fun and I got to collaborate with interns from various department.
The second was a loyalty pitch to BP. You read that right… We, the interns, got to present a full campaign to an executive team from BP! That was a crazy, but rewarding experience as I got to work on a higher stakes project and practice my professional presentation skills. And by the end of the 10-weeks Digitas trusted us enough to work with the client. That’s pretty unbelievable!
Digitas had an incredible summer too. By the end of my second week, the agency won the Creative Data Grand Prix at the 2017 Cannes Festival for the Whirlpool Care Counts campaign (check it out here). This was a HUGE deal and the team that won was actually based in the Chicago offices, so naturally we celebrated for four weeks.
In addition to the amazing experiences within the office, the interns got to go to a Cubs game, tour the Google Chicago offices, visit other top Chicago agencies like Leo Burnett and Ogilvy, and overall, just have a great summer of work and play!
Thank you Digitas for a summer I will never forget!
Next stop senior year.. And then the real world!
