Starting From the Ground Up
Unlike most internships, there isn't much pencil pushing or coffee getting around here. If I had to describe it, it would be like getting thrown into the deep end of the pool with a collection of olympic swimmers all treading water, ready to help you if you need it. And it's awesome.
I currently lead a group of around 7. 2 designers, 3 market researchers, an account planner, and a copywriter. Our project is to build a lateral support brand for a huge print company that is struggling to connect with small businesses and individual consumers. (The project is real too, not fictional!)
We're in the first step stages right now, looking at the market landscape, comparing competition and talking to the print company about their wants and expectations. Naturally in these first stages, there is a lot of communication happening. Who is talking to who, who's doing what, and a lot of group concepting. Whilst it would seem logical to thing that the majority of talk taking place is report talk, there is a large amount of rapport talk too, probably due to the fact that the team are very familiar with each other. We are all about the same age, the majority of us are undergrads at CU and the majority of my team are Advertising majors. (5/7 I think). So we haven't had to work hard on creating a group dynamic, and a materialized 'friendship' because it already existed.
However, this kind of group can also have its downfalls. I find myself constantly having to use rhetoric as a key tool to establish leadership. Although an actual hierarchal structure does exist, it can be difficult at times for the team to respect leadership when the leadership isn't a grizzled, older veteran of the industry. Thus we find ourselves in a situation where rhetoric is king. Hopefully as the semester goes on I will be able to talk about this unique dynamic more; There are some great articles to compliment it, but that will do it for now!
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