Diary of a JMS Intern

Each year, as summer comes to a close and students head back to campus, JMS must also say goodbye to our favorite students, the interns. This year we were fortunate to have Ewa Robak as our marketing administrative intern. We enjoyed giving her the opportunity to experience the behind the scenes, real world of marketing. We invite you to read about Ewa’s experiences interning with JMS Marketing. Goodbye Ewa!  We will miss you.

-Jean Marie Saidler, President

My name is Ewa Robak and I am currently in the College of Business at Marquette University, working toward a major in Marketing and International Business, with a minor in Spanish. This summer I discovered that in today’s competitive world, it’s difficult to obtain an interview for an internship, especially after just one year of college. I am fortunate that the JMS Marketing family welcomed me with open arms this summer to learn about marketing and to grow as a professional in the business world. Owners, Jean Marie and Keith, were great for giving me this opportunity and trusting me to assist with various projects for their clients. Every day was a true learning experience, helping me to acquire the skills necessary for a successful, well-rounded marketing job. My main tasks at JMS included: assisting in the creation of a career fair campaign, maintaining social media pages, composing copy for ads, writing press releases, and assisting in proofing final projects for a variety of clients. These projects gave me the opportunity to anticipate how different clients will want to present themselves and learn what a marketing team does to make sure a plan is successful and how to judge if goals are met.

This summer, I learned about the many tactics and tools related to the ever-complex world of marketing and I was fortunate to do so with an experienced team of marketing experts. When it came to strategy, Lisa and Mike showed me what it really means to plan and implement projects. Their responsibilities encompass just about everything related to marketing other than graphic design. They work with clients to manage websites, social media pages and various other projects; they also review and analyze data, and provide overall recommendations for marketing plans. In doing so, they are able to target what works best to make sure clients achieve their goals. It’s a complex, yet very rewarding job. I was also in the presence of some amazing graphic designers: Trish, Brad and Brandon. Although the job of a marketing strategist is very important, the graphic designers made it all come to life. Their creative brains find clever ways to word headlines and slogans, figure out eye-catching placements, and do great things with layout and copy for websites and print materials. I quickly realized that one department could not be successful without the other and that collaboration is key for a successful marketing agency.

JMS helps many clients from different industries fulfill their marketing needs. The wide variety of clients kept my mind active and taught me what works best in appealing to a wide range of business’ and consumers. To best understand a client’s goals and objectives, JMS used more than just email and phone conversations. They included regularly scheduled meetings with the clients as standard protocol to develop a lasting relationship. Because of the diversity among their clients, the meetings help JMS to better understand the client’s workplace culture and stay focused on who they are as a business and what they are trying to achieve.

When I was first assigned tasks for different clients, I was not aware that I would have to use different approaches to present topics. With the help of my colleagues, I became acquainted with the brands and audiences I would be addressing and came to the realization that B2B (Business to Business) is quite different than B2C (Business to Consumer). My main tasks centered primarily on social media and I learned that even when using a minimal amount of characters when writing, each company had a different culture that needed to be understood prior to doing so. Each client and each project had different demographics, keywords, images and media outlets. For a utility company powered by diversity, stewardship and safety, we presented content that showcased these pillars of the business. Photos and graphics were also carefully crafted to support this content. On the flipside, an industrial business client required a more focused, technical approach with their marketing. Colorful charts depicting informative data, along with the direct features and benefits of their equipment proved to be the solution that drove the message forward for them. In all cases, I learned to keep steady focus on maintaining a clear, consistent message and that each business presents a different sense of self.

One of the major projects I worked on during my time at JMS was assisting in a career fair campaign for a client. Being a college student, I had a lot of ideas about career fairs after seeing them first hand at college. When presenting my ideas to the company, I learned that despite my best efforts in crafting “the perfect campaign”, I still received questions that stumped me. Thankfully my research and study of the client’s industry helped to alleviate the lump in my throat and gave me the ability to answer difficult questions with confidence. I also realized that creating a trusting relationship with clients is important in order to achieve full collaboration on projects and that tone, language and understanding one’s role in a presentation is vital for success. Helping to put together the campaign, as well as being a part of the presentation, was a great experience that will help me in future presentations and project outlines.

This upcoming semester I will be taking my first marketing college course and am very excited to see the topics that I learned during my internship come up in class. Having an internship allowed me to realize what marketing truly is, as opposed to any preconceived ideas I may have had about it being a luxurious career with lots of travel and client meetings. Coming out of the internship, I learned that before that point, comes lots of prep work and time invested to gain those types of clients. Even after learning that my dream job may not be as laid back as I had imagined, I definitely still want to continue interning and getting a diverse view of different genres of marketing. I still have many questions as to where exactly I see myself working, but there are also many answers that the experience has provided me with. I am happy to have had the help of such a great group of mentors to guide me through work and life learning experiences. I am excited to continue to learn new things as I continue my education in school and in the real world.