Me with Jo and Sammy from Emerald Frog Marketing
Wan Chun Lo, a Year 11 student from Kings School in Ely, joined us for a week’s work experience to learn all about the busy world of marketing and PR. Here is her diary (and, consequently, she can now also add “social media content creation” to her CV!)
8th June Monday
I didn’t really understand the finer details of Marketing before I started work experience, but today I learnt that it consists of a wide range of areas. I went to two meetings today. The first one was at Ewing Associates in St Ives who Emerald Frog is working with to change the design of their website so that it will soon become mobile-friendly. The company would like a new design for their website as the technology has moved on a lot since their original website was built 4 or 5 years ago. They also want to add more features to their website so that customers can find out more information.
The other meeting was in Huntingdon at Point Recruitment regarding the design of the brand image and how could it best be communicated. Emerald Frog Marketing has refreshed their logo to bring it more up to date, but not by straying too far from the original design so as not to confuse their customers. The new logo looks much more colourful though.We also talked about developing printed marketing materials and the right amount of information to include. It would look complicated with too much information, but people will easily ignore the information if it is not specialised.
9th June Tuesday
I went to a meeting at Poet’s House in Ely called “Storm in a teacup”, which involved lots of business women exchanging ideas. It was quite a good opportunity to meet different business people from the local area and to know how successful they are but what are the issues that they have to face. They shared advice for those who are having problems with their business, for example: some people may have a problem on their cash flow due to the late payments and some have problem understanding how best to use social media. The meeting helped them get some ideas of solving the problems they are experiencing. Later in the week I found that I had appeared in the local paper! (You can read the article from the Ely News here)
There’s me in the centre with the “Storm in a teacup” ladies at Poets House! (From the Ely News)
In the afternoon, I went to see the design team and how they create and design website pages, graphics and logos. It was so interesting to see the process of making them. They had to measure the size to fit the pictures and words into the page. This process does consume a lot of time. Sadly, people who go on the website can only see the end result of their efforts but not the tough creative process that they have gone through.
10th June Wednesday
I have been working on a presentation for the whole day. Jo, the Director, set me a challenge to experience pulling together a “pitch” in a short time frame to understand how marketing agencies often work under pressure and tight deadlines. A “pitch” is a presentation where marketing agencies present to clients with their ideas for a campaign. Sammy, who is a Marketing Assistant at Emerald Frog Marketing, and I worked on a presentation for a new service Emerald Frog Marketing are thinking of offering to start-up and small businesses. We had to research a lot online. I thought it was going to be easy and it wouldn’t take a lot of time, but I was wrong! We spent the whole day on researching, with a few short breaks in between. I realised we can’t find specific information on the internet and it took me a lot of time to research the information about the competitors. I was searching for the price of any potentially similar services and I compared it with our price to see if the price was an accurate one and to see if what Emerald Frog is proposing is unique.
I also researched information about publications to find out advertising rates. I feel so exhausted after working for the whole day, but I think I gained a lot of experience on working with new people, under pressure, in an unfamiliar environment.
Sammy and I working on our “Pitch Challenge”
11th June Thursday
This morning I went to a meeting with Jo at the Ely Committee meeting of the Cambridgeshire Chamber of Commerce, exchanging business ideas and discussing the local area economy. Jo is on the Ely Committee and they meet monthly. They also discussed organising events such as helping start-up business or students and the unemployed to know more about business. It’s quite a serious meeting but Freda, from the Chamber of Commerce very kindly explained what it was all about and how she plans and runs the meetings.
Afterwards, we went back to the office and I prepared for a presentation I have to give next week at school about my work experience this week. Also, Jo gave me a You Tube link of one of their customers who has appeared on Dragons’ Den because I told her that I have a project in school about doing a Dragons’ Den pitch to my teachers. It’s so helpful that she gave me the link so I can see how can I prepare and persuade the “Dragons”. Jo sent me some photos, pictures and information for my presentation in school. I was preparing this in the afternoon, I think it is going to look good.
Me with Freda at the Ely Chamber of Commerce meeting
12th June Friday
This is the last day for me to have my work experience, I was so glad that I could join this company this week. Today, Sammy and I did the presentation for the “Pitch Challenge”. We have been searching and putting all the information in the presentation and getting ready to present it. In the morning, we were still working on the powerpoint presentation as we wanted to make it look fantastic. Also, we were adding some information that we found out yesterday. In the afternoon, we were ready to present the work that we have been working on for this week! It seemed easy at the start, but actually it’s a really difficult challenge. I have never thought it would be so hard before doing the presentation! There was lots of information that you have to find out and these information is not easy to find, it was the most challenge part. The presentation went well and Jo was really pleased with our efforts and are planning on developing the idea further later on this year.
Jo also showed me some press releases she’s been working on and distributing. I also had a go at writing a quote for a press release about the work experience programme and uploading content (this blog!) to the Emerald Frog Marketing website.
I was really happy that Emerald Frog Marketing gave me this chance to experience the challenges that I will face in the future in the world of marketing. Although, doing a presentation in an unfamiliar place is really not an easy thing to do, I really gained some valuable experience and learnt a lot.
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