1. Placement Report
My Experience as a Marketing Intern at Dundee
International Women’s Centre
By: Caroline Brysting
27th March 2016
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Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the DIWC for providing me with the
opportunity to a position in the field of marketing. Specifically, I would like to
thank Parven Kuar, Community manager at DIWC, for taking the time to teach
me invaluable marketing techniques, for answering all my questions and for
helping me integrate and learn about the centre and it’s business operations. I
am grateful to have worked with staff at DIWC who have all been lovely and
welcomed me as a member in their office for the past 8 weeks.
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Section 1: Introduction
As part of the Internship Module, I accepted a placement as a Marketing Intern at
the Dundee International Women’s Centre (DIWC). The job description of a
Marketing Intern at DIWC was to help promote the Mobile Crèche Service
provided by DIWC online and offline. The Mobile Crèche Service is DIWC’s main
form of income and also has potential to be utilized by a larger range of local
organisations as well as private clients in Dundee. Therefore, my job was to help
increase awareness and clearly market the services the Mobile Crèche has to
offer. Since I study an MA International Business with Marketing, I felt that eight
weeks of working closely with Parven Kuar, Community Manager at DIWC,
would provide me with the opportunity to experience working with marketing
as a profession and contribute to my course and future career development.
Moreover, when I read the centre’s mission statement; “To address the needs of
women, with an emphasis on those from black and ethnic minority communities:
To promote and create opportunities for women’s social, political and economic
inclusion, and for the advancement of education and employment”(DIWC, 2016)
I was convinced that DIWC would be a work environment in which I would
integrate well socially because I speak four languages and have experienced
integration in societies in six different nations throughout my life, so I can
familiarize with members and staff at the centre. Overall, the following report is
divided into two further sections. “Section 2” reflects on tasks and projects I have
worked and evaluates my contribution to marketing the mobile crèche, referring
to published work in the Appendix section. Additionally, I move on to identify
obstacles I encountered and evaluate how I overcame them, commenting on my
shortcomings, developed skills and achievements. Finally, in Section 3, this
report will describe how my work experience as a Marketing Intern at DIWC has
affected my university course decisions and future career path.
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Section 2: Reflection on Internship
At DIWC I have generally been engaged with online marketing of the Mobile
Crèche Service, however, my job has included a variety of daily assignments. For
my main project, I worked with the Mobile Crèche website,
mobilecrèchedundee.org/, developing the blog department (Appendix A).
Working collaboratively with Parven, we identified areas for growth for the
website, discovering that mobilecrèchedundee.org/ is a website on which people
spend an average of 30 seconds on the front page only, before exiting again.
Consequently, I designed and wrote four blogs on wordpress.org, learning the
marketing technique to use words in the blog that would create online matches
for flexible childcare in Dundee. I quickly learned how to use Google Adwords
that helped me identify key words typed into the Google search engine. My
efforts with the blog have contributed to DIWC’s two long-term aims with the
mobile crèche; to increase visits on our front page and blog page and to move the
mobile crèche website closer to the first page of the Google search engine for
flexible childcare in Scotland. This I know because Wordpress statistics show
visitors now move on to browse other pages of the blog. The assignment process
was challenging and time consuming, but very educational as I had never
previously worked with online media Wordpress or Piktochart in writing blogs
and nor had I ever used Pixabay as a source of downloading online images either.
On the other hand, I have also contributed to the short-term aim of the mobile
crèche marketing which was to inform organisations in a quick and concise
manner of the booking process and benefits of having a mobile crèche. This goal
has been fulfilled by two Infographics blog entitled “How to book a mobile
crèche” and “FAQs: 5 min guide to Dundee’s local mobile crèche” (Appendices B
and C). My second marketing project to parents and target organisations was
based partially offline. It firstly involved creatively developing the old mobile
crèche physical brochure. Together with Parven, we discussed size, format and
content ideas. I then wrote the content of the brochure, creatively tailoring
information available on the website to inform parents and target organisations,
a task I enjoyed a lot. I also wrote a draft e-mail to send to local enterprises and
venues marketing the mobile crèche.
Although I have managed to complete a variety of tasks and assignments, I
encountered a few personal obstacles that reduced the quality of my work in one
of my assignments. The first of my weaknesses that my Insights profile has
helped me to pinpoint was that I tend to become too excited and “leap before I
look”. For example, when I was given a list of tasks to be completed during week
7, I began my task to write an email to organisations marketing the mobile
crèche, with no brainstorming or planning. This caused me to fail to complete the
e-mail using the marketing techniques I had learned at DIWC and although I
finished within a short time period, I wrote an e-mail that was too extensive –
one that a busy events manager would never take the time to read. I felt very
embarrassed that another member of staff, Laura, allocated her time to edit the
e-mail before sending it out. Nevertheless, I managed to improve on this
shortcoming at every single following session where I have managed to create
two infographics and publish them on the mobile crèche blog. I spent an extra
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10-20 minutes researching, planning what to include and familiarizing myself
with Infographics before beginning. Although I spent 5 hours on the FAQs
Infographic, the resulting Infographics were well-structured, creative, vibrant
and concise, which both Parven and I are very satisfied with (Appendices B and
C).
Another obstacle I encountered was a set back to my schedule at DIWC due to
my illness one week and Parven’s illness the following week. This required extra
effort for Parven and I to collaboratively organise and plan the next couple
weeks in order to make up for eight hours of work lost at DIWC. However, I was
motivated to keep up to date with assignments at DIWC. I communicated with
Parven over e-mail on a daily basis and utilized the extra time during my two
weeks off to write a blog for International Women’s Day. I also took the initiative
to work with the upcoming tasks I was aware of and allocated time to prepare
for the next sessions by developing ideas, editing my previous blog posts to
perfection and familiarizing myself with Infographics. The outcome of my own
organisation, dedication and initiative was that there were no deadlines and no
assignments I failed to complete due to illness.
The final smaller obstacle I encountered was my lack of experience with IT
including online sources of social and creative media. This was a relatively small
obstacle as I personally feel that it was easily overcome through extra
communication and use of time on Parven’s and my behalf. For example, Parven
spent 5 minutes running through the functions, tools and widgets of Wordpress,
Pixabay, GoogleAds and Infographics before I began my assignments that
required the media. Personally, I used my energetic nature and positive attitude
to stay motivated and eager to improve my IT skills, occasionally using time out
of the centre to familiarize myself with functions. I also used my communication
skills to ask appropriate questions to all members of staff at any point I
encountered a difficulty, which developed teamwork, debate and personal
confidence.
Overall, the internship has helped me to identify my weaknesses in the work
environment but it has also provided me with the opportunity to find and
practice strategies to improve them. I have also utilized my key strengths as a
marketing intern at DIWC by initiating new activities such as the idea to work on
an assignment from home, which also highlights my ability to see options and
alternatives and to stay positive. Lastly, I have enhanced my communication
skills and team-working skills in a professional work environment from listening
to advice, putting it into practice, and learning from my mentor, Parven.
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Section 3: Conclusionsand NextSteps
To conclude, I feel that this internship at DIWC has been an invaluable
experience for me in terms of personal and professional skills as described in
Section 2. As a whole, I have found that I enjoy working in a social environment
such as the one in the staff office at DIWC where we all sit and work in the same
room. This allows for appropriate jokes and the ability to ask one another openly
for advice and discuss on-going issues in the enterprise. I will take with me my
personal insights profile, describing me as a team player as I have also been able
to work comfortably and efficiently with a mentor and with other staff in a team.
Thus, for future job opportunities, I will remember that I work well in a position
that requires teamwork and creative discussion on short term but also long-term
assignments. Concerning my future career prospects, I have gained enough
insight to a position as a marketing employee and a position as a community
manager at DIWC to know that I do no longer wish to pursue a career in
marketing. Although I was convinced that I wanted to change my degree to MA
International Business with Marketing and pursue a career within this field
before I began the internship, I have come to realize that I do not enjoy working
with 95% of my time with online sources, which is where marketing in the 21st
century is based on an increasing level. Although I work well with excel and am
happy to use computers for referencing, emails and logging purposes, I simply do
not enjoy that my main object of contact is with the computer. On the other hand,
I have discovered that I enjoy working with others and I have a thirst to engage
with hands-on work and direct communication with clients. I also enjoy making
decisions and like to see an outcome when I feel strongly about my own efforts
and ideas. Therefore, I believe that a job where I am able to make final decisions
and realise my own ideas developed with a team is something for me. My next
steps will be to choose some more dynamic business modules to do with events
organisation and to acquire a few business internships within the fashion
industry or the pharmaceutical industry.
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References
"Our Vision - Dundee International Women's Centre." Dundee International
Womens Centre. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2016. <http://diwc.co.uk/our-vision>.
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Appendix B: Infographic “How to Book a Mobile Crèche”.
Source: http://mobilecrechedundee.org/how-to-book-a-mobile-creche/
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Appendix C: Infographic “FAQs: 5 min guide
through Dundee’s local mobile crèche”
Source: http://mobilecrechedundee.org/faqs-5-min-
information-guide-to-dundees-local-riseshine-
mobile-childcare/
