3 Ways My Internship At Red Fuse Helped Me Grow as a Professional
When it came to expertise in the world of marketing, I had only dabbled in small internships or campus organization positions. So before my first day as a summer intern at Red Fuse, an integrated global WPP team dedicated to serving Colgate-Palmolive worldwide, I was nervous and intimidated. As the days got closer to me working as their Global Digital Account Management Intern, I got more nervous. This was the first time I would be working for such an established company as an intern, on such a large client. However, stepping foot into Red Fuse’s office on a perfect summer day after navigating my way through New York City alone gave me confidence that I could be successful for the next ten weeks. Red Fuse welcomed me in right away, introducing me to the team and giving me the lowdown on what my expectations were before I began my training. While I started off as a nervous intern, Red Fuse’s support and intern program truly helped me grow as a professional – as I reflect on my internship, these are the three main ways.
I was pushed to learn a new skill through certification courses – and applied those new skills to a real project.
After my introductions to the team, I began my training. My primary obligations were to help the business analysts on our team to find optimizations and efficiencies on Colgate-Palmolive's website. Therefore, I had to learn how to use Google Analytics. My team pushed me to earn my Google Analytics certificates not only for Beginners, but for Advanced and Power Users as well. After earning my three certificates, I was nervous and overwhelmed to actually put my newly gained knowledge to use. My team allowed me to begin small, assisting the business analyst in his projects to slowly grow my responsibilities. By the end of the internship, I compiled my own set of data distilled from Colgate-Palmolive’s Google Analytics to assist in their upcoming website redesign. Not only did the courses teach me new skills, but the team gave me the chance to grow professionally as I eased into my responsibilities and grew my contributions over time.
I had the chance to tap into my creative side and generate ideas for new initiatives and projects.
The Global team that I was lucky to be a part of researches new ideas and projects and relays them to other departments that specialize in specific areas around the world. The Global team’s goal was to expose me to several different aspects of what the department does, this way, I would get as much hands on experience as I could. Therefore, they allowed me to research new ideas and projects that could be relayed to other departments for them to decide if they would like to implement them or not. As an intern, it was incredibly exciting to have this additional responsibility to be creative in proposals for potential new projects – and it wasn’t a responsibility I took lightly.
After a week of research, I compiled my top ideas and pitched them to our head of department, who took much interest in them. Soon after, I pooled my research together and created a persuasive and informative presentation to be sent out to all of the departments. The feedback I got was incredibly positive, and the thought of one of my ideas coming to life for Colgate-Palmolive was so exciting to me. Having the opportunity to contribute real ideas challenged me to think bigger and pushed me to make meaningful contributions to the company.
In an intern group project, I had the opportunity to generate real deliverables for a real client.
A part of the internship program was an intern group project that ran for the second half of the internship. To further our experience in working with different types of brands and industries, we were assigned a client outside of the Colgate-Palmolive brand. Only it wasn’t a hypothetical project – we had a real client we were to meet with and accomplish real tasks for. We had our first meeting with the CEO of the company, and found out our project was to propose a rebranding for the company. Even though we were intimidated at the prospect of such a large and important project, it only pushed us to work harder to deliver a worthwhile end result while learning how to successfully work side-by-side with a client.
By the end of the five weeks, simultaneously fulfilling my projects with my Global team, I felt accomplished for the first time in my professional career. During the last week, my intern group and I pitched the idea in front of the interns, employees, a panel of judges, and the CEO of the client. At the end of our presentation, the CEO told the room how much we helped him and that he was going to implement our work in real life. Our team accomplished something we had never done with only the help of each other, a mentor, and support from the larger Red Fuse team. We expanded our professional skill set, pushed through the challenges, and delivered a set of recommendations that could actually be applied in the real world.
Reflecting on my ten weeks this summer at Red Fuse, I am grateful to have had the opportunities I did. Walking in on my first day, I was not expecting to contribute, accomplish, and succeed as much as I did, but I learned that it is okay to ask questions, give input, and pitch new ideas. I found the experience I had at Red Fuse to be the best and most rewarding way to grow as a professional in such an intimidating industry, and it’s instilled in me the confidence to push forward in my career.
