The first line of the e-mail read: I am very pleased to offer you one of our seats in the Saatchi and Saatchi Summer internship program working in account management. There was no ambiguity there. She had received the internship opportunity.
Still, senior strategic communications major Allison Constable had to read the note several more times to make sure it was real. (Of course, it didn’t help that she got the e-mail on April Fool’s Day, and her friends tried to convince her it was a joke.) But Constable had, in fact, landed an internship as an account management intern at the one agency she says she most admired. Not a bad April 1 at all.
Now, several weeks into the experience, one of Constable’s main summer responsibilities has been working on the Tide account, which has allowed her to create a newsletter for the organization, put together an ideas book, enterprise different ways to expand their brand and look for new advertising opportunities. In other words, her quotidian tasks are never the same, and thus, she says, never boring.
“You kind of do everything,” Constable says. “Every day is completely different. Nothing’s on a timeline. You can plan out everything, and it never turns out that way. Advertising agencies always have something going on. Something strange, funny and/or exciting goes on every day.”
Constable loves the work. Her passion for advertising piqued, in part, because of the few advertising courses she’s been able to take in the School of Communications. While she wishes there were more of an emphasis on advertising and creative work in the school, she also says she had a great professor from whom she took four courses. This summer, she’s simply filling in the gaps by virtue of the training she’s receiving at Saatchi & Saatchi.
“I have been extremely busy here and am learning more than I could have imagined not just about the account management position of an agency, but everything that’s involved with the industry from the creative and planning side to production and everything in between that goes into creating great ideas and communicating to the world,” says Constable, who will also serve as the president to Elon’s new American Advertising Federation chapter, which formed last year.
Constable says she began to study the work and credibility of various agencies last summer while she was interning at Draftfcb, another advertising firm. Saatchi & Saatchi caught her eye, and she knew right away that she wanted to intern with the prestigious New York agency.
“I made sure to contact their HR department early this year to see what internship opportunities they had for the summer,” she says. “I sent in my application and resume and cover letter to both the internship coordinator as well as various key figures within the agency.”
It obviously helped, and now she’s reaping the benefits. Constable says she wants to form relationships with several people at Saatchi & Saatchi so that she has lifelong contacts. She also envisions the entire experience as being helpful to the new AAF chapter and to her fellow classmates.
“It’s definitely going to help me with promoting the club,” Constable says. “It’s going to help me bring something to other (students).”
But most importantly, it’s reinforced her decision to enter the world of advertising after she graduates in May 2010.
“This is exactly what I want to go into,” Constable says. “I know that I love advertising, and it’s something that I want to pursue. I’m definitely going to try for it when I get out of college.”
Intern Insider will run one to two times a week during the summer and will feature brief stories about some of the interns from the School of Communications or in School of Communications programs.