First Week as a Strategist at McCann NY
Before this internship, I never really thought that I would be in a position to experience what agency life is about. I was actually really apprehensive about whether to take this internship or not since it meant that I would be sacrificing getting a full-time job in the summer after graduation.
Looking back at it now, I realize that the decision to take this step was definitely an excellent opportunity for me to learn and grow my skills early on in my career. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a Strategist and I wasn't sure if I agency life either. But one thing is for sure, I'm definitely going to be experiencing a whole new side of advertising.
McCann Worldgroup is a BEAST of an agency. At least, that's what I've been told by my mentors and teachers once I told them the news about my acceptance to the internship program. I was actually more nervous than excited at this prospect since I’ve only heard about them in class and would never expect to one day work for them. Their name in the Advertising industry holds so much weight and fame; it’s one of those corporations where if you’ve studied Advertising, you’ll know who they are. Especially their popularity with “The Fearless Girl Statue” campaign for State Street Global Advisors in honor of International Women’s Day back in 2017.
Video from: https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2018/experiential/26540/fearless-girl/
When they said it was a beast of an agency, they were right. McCann NY just by itself is MASSIVE regarding the number of employees to their accounts and their reputation in the industry. To add to my already starstruck and overwhelmed self, I was placed on their Verizon team, one of their most significant accounts alongside Mastercard, and would be working under one of their Directors of Strategy, Renata Mittnacht.
If I can describe Renata in one word as a Strategist, it would be "eloquent". She has developed her own way of writing strategy and it's fascinating to watch her work out the language of insights, goals, creative truths, and so much more. I definitely got lucky to be mentored by her since her knowledge of the industry makes me want to be as innovative as her.
Now that the background of how I got to McCann has been established, let's move on to the first week of my strategy work. I am going to talk more about the second week technically since the first week of the internship was mostly spent with onboarding meetings and introductions. This week was when I got my first assignment from Renata and it was to assist in one of her projects involving Verizon's new +play platform.
My first task ever for the Verizon strategy team was to conduct a competitive analysis of potential competitors and draw out insights that can prove the advantage of the +play platform to consumers. It may seem like a simple task; researching the brands of competitors are what we were taught to do in the early years of my advertising education. But doing competitive analysis for a group project on a hypothetical brand is totally different than applying it to an actual corporation, where what I find can potentially affect the company and my reputation in the team. For three days, I researched competitor brands and discovered what makes them unique, what advertising tactics they used, and how the overall consumer market perceived them in comparison with Verizon. After this, I presented my research findings to Renata to get feedback from her before I can move on to the insights portion. I was completely nervous at first, but then seeing her serious demeanor when I was talking gave me a boost of confidence since this means that she is actually listening to what I had to say. I wouldn't say that I absolutely nailed it since she expressed that I should look into other points as well and should hone in more on some aspects, but I can tell that she acknowledged my work and effort. The rest of the week was spent gathering insights and evidence points from the research and helping her build the competitive analysis part of the presentation deck. Along the way, she introduced me to Freelance Brand Strategist, Gauri Kapoor, who was assisting her in the +play project. They were both super nice and supportive of the work I brought and were also giving advice and guiding me along the way.
Based on this experience, I definitely felt like I accomplished something during this week and that was the first of many times where I realized that I actually applied stuff I learned in class to a real-world project. This is for sure, another proud milestone in my early career as a Strategist.
