I am training online with the RSM company in Kuwait as an internship and the website of the company is https://www.rsm.global/kuwait/ Final report is for online internship with the company, and I am g
MRKT 470 Internship Report
Final Report
Introduction
Purpose of the internship and career objectives:
The main purpose of my internship is to know more about marketing in real life specifically to get engaged more in the market and how to deal with real clients closely, as one of the basic requirements for being a successful marketer is client servicing and how to build a strong relationship with clients so that they feel comfortable and trustworthy when dealing with you.
A new aspect that I learnt during my internship at MC Group is that according to clients the person they are working with represents the whole company; for example, the clients that I handled see me as MC Group so if I am good for them they will like the company as a whole even if they don’t know every single person in the company and vice versa. So their experience with the marketer is the how they judge the professionalism of the company.
I think this opportunity gave me a very clear image of what to expect and how to deal directly with clients. Nevertheless, there is a procedure that we need to follow internally. The way things flow and departments complete each other to get a final product or service for one clients after several meetings externally and internally.
The environment as a whole also makes a huge difference in the progress of work. Feeling comfortable and confident while working and expressing your point if view is very important as it might result in a better decision making.
What I was looking for in the company that I will be an intern student in is to fulfill my career objectives such as working in the field closely, getting to know more of what to expect from clients and how to market the products and service of the company, and enrich my university knowledge by manual field work. At MC Group I learnt many new terms and my knowledge level got upgraded to a new level in a very short time which was surprising to me and to my colleagues.
My career objectives that I working on during my internship at MC Group are as following:
Digital marketing (Social media and e-commerce)
Advertising and branding
Strategic marketing planning
Public relations & event planning
Market research and analysis
Direct marketing
Marketing communication and media
Social media account handler
Description of the company
MC-Group is a turn-key communications specialist and one of the top 5 agencies in both branding and media buying. Therefore, they always look forward to keeping our clients satisfied and maintain the trust our clients have given them. Their mission is to prove to ourselves and the world that specialization is good, but combined mastery is better and their vision is to get better at what we do, every single day, through solutions that mimic our improvement. In Kuwait, they are one of the leading marketing and advertising agencies with a well known brand name and a very positive reputation. They are located in Kuwait, Kuwait City, Al-Hamra Tower, 18th Floor, office C.
One of the main clients at MC Group is GMC (General Motors Company) which is represented by Mohammad Saleh & Reza Yousuf Behbehani Company as their official dealer in Kuwait. They have several car showrooms here in Kuwait as the brand is one of the top car brands in the Middle East especially in the Gulf region. They also have AlZayani as clients were they handle their online and offline ads. In addition to, Boucheron jeweler which is one of the most luxurious jewelry brands internationally.
The organizational structure of MC Group is starting from the CEO and Managing Director then the marketing team which are basically the client servicing who closes the deals with companies and keep them as a client by signing a yearly contract and meets with all other departments to give them a brief of what the client is asking for and generate ideas of how to meet these requests. Creative team who are responsible for generating ideas and being creative in forming posts for social media and offline ads. Next comes the media team are responsible for reservations for offline and online ads and press releases, for example, newspapers, magazines, Television, outdoor screens on streets and building roofs and cinemas. We also have the production team which organizes the whole production process such as material type, paper type, sizes, colors, quantity and quality of printouts requested from clients. There are also several photographers and videographers that goes out for shooting for events, campaigns, booths at the mall and they shoot for pictures and videos for daily posts on social media.
Description of internship
Some of my Duties were daily and by each week I had something new added to my tasks list. I had to do a daily report of automotive ads and press releases in newspapers with their sizes, brand name, company and name of newspaper. Also, a daily watches report with the same content. These two reports were sent daily to our main client Behbehani and AlZayani. At the beginning, I did not know how to make a simple quotation for clients and I did not understand most of the terms I saw on old quotations. As the days passed, I started asking my supervisor about the things I did not understand and he taught me that even capital letter for certain words make a huge difference in showing the professionalism of the agency in front of other companies which gives our agency more credits and a better brand image and reputation in the market. We list the name of job, specifications of the job, details, cost, agency fee, and total price in a quotation. Sometimes it is adjusted according to the job itself and the clients’ requirements. Therefore, we consider special discount and price for some jobs that we perform.
New tasks added to the daily reports are as following:
Deal with clients and finish all meetings until the mid- afternoon regarding productions or designs to be installed.
Dealing with project initial stages such as planning, development and complete advertisement stages
Follow up with e-mails, phone calls and social media applications.
Organize international event
Work experience
I worked for this agency 6 hours a day from 9am to 3pm for 21 days excluding weekends. My internship started on 11th of February 2018 to 13th of March 2018. My supervisor was called Mohamad Zouhairy and his position is Senior Account Director. He had a very huge part in my progress and he worked on teaching me how to be more professional in working with clients, answering questions on social media, forming quotations for clients, and he gave me the keys to strengthen my abilities because he believed in me and he saw that I have passion in this field.
In general, everything I did in this internship was very useful for me as it added new thoughts and experience to me. The work experience was very interesting and informative at the same time, my supervisor had a very big part of my progress as he taught me a lot of new concepts and terms during my internship duration. Moreover, he made me take care of small things that I thought it did not matter, but it actually did in professional wise. The whole team at MC Group helped me in maintaining a better working standard. They supported me and encouraged me to share my ideas even though they had much more experience than me but they are looking for fresh graduate and youth ideas which are new to them.
When I started my internship my work was very basic and unprofessional, the patience of the whole team and the courage they gave me made me feel hat I want to give more and show them my abilities. Day by day, I started understanding the procedure of the company and how to deal with clients personally. I also understood that marketing is way different than sales from the way we communicate with clients as marketing is mainly client servicing, by satisfying the client and keeping the relationship with them smooth and professional we guarantee that they will stay with us and not go to another company.
There are two types of clients, the first type is the clients that sign a yearly contract with the company (in our case it is an agency) and this is what we aim for. The second type is clients that work with our agency by project only. For example, as I mentioned in my weekly reports that GMC Behbehani and Behbehani Watch World are our main clients at MC Group therefore, they have a yearly contract which we work on throughout the year. We handle their social media account, their offline and online ads and press releases, their campaigns, their indoor and outdoor events and photography for everything mentioned.
Day by day my responsibilities increased and I started working more closely with the other departments such as arts and design, production, creative team and management team. We had to form a special design voucher, brochures, posts for social media, ads and press releases for each occasion. Apart from the media plan that is set according to the budget given to us by the mother company abroad which is distributed among a variety of brands under the name of Behbehani. This is done when we have a meeting with the media department after discussing the requested job with the client and forming a brief with the marketing team. We also follow up with production for printings such as business cards, certificates for awards and retirements, letterheads, folders, envelopes, giveaways such as flash memories, bags, caps, pens, and t-shirts.
In addition to the above, I had to schedule the social media posts through two websites which are agorapluse and onlypult which we download the photo or video with the caption and hashtag that we form and we schedule them on a certain date and time. These programs will upload them on social media automatically as per the set date and time so no need for us to do this task manually. However, there is a follow up manually that I need to take care of just incase something went wrong. I also had to answer all comments and direct messages on all GMC Behbehani and Behbehani social media accounts such as Instagram, Facebook and twitter. Furthermore, I had to keep their YouTube channel up to date with the videos we upload on social media.
These are some Opportunities and limitations that I faced during my internship at MC Group
Opportunities:
Marketing coordinator
Applied marketing strategies
Communications and public relations
Operational development
Event Planner and coordinator
Limitations:
Short time to work with all these projects
Information about clients is not available. I had to know the clients and build a relationship with them, while on the other hand they already did work before with our team.
Stress and tension is always around to finish all duties on time
Load of work from several clients at the same time and sometimes is required to finish all the jobs together
Internship is important because it’s the first path in human working experience as a fresh graduate. It’s where a person changes his life from a stage to another. However, university life gave me the theoretical part and internship the practical part which at the end complete each other. You will still have tasks to do, dead line to meet but yet when you are a student you decide and if you did a mistake you will not affect others. But at work, you are with a team under the company’s name, so this gives you the responsibility to give your best and try to present the best you can. Getting your feet wet, meaning stepping through the first stages of your life career. Tasting the tips of how working life is. Internship gives a quick skim through as they say of life and work after graduating. To know yourself is to know your goals and how to best achieve them. That internship will give them a chance to explore what a career in business marketing would be like. Sometimes, reality does not meet expectations. At this point, the student is given a chance to decide whether they wish to continue with their current career path or try something else.
Summary and conclusions
The purpose of the internship is to encourage students to work in their professionalism. An internship allows you to advance first-hand experience of working in the real world.
It also allows students to connect the skill, knowledge, and theoretic practice they learnt in university. You can gain infinite amounts of education in your life, however, that knowledge doesn’t always convert to the working life. As a fresh graduate in marketing, my aim was to apply to a company that could give me good experience that help me in maintaining my career. MC group is a marketing agency that offered their help to give me a rich internship experience. I am very much thankful for getting this opportunity which gave me strength, courage, ability, and confidence in myself to accomplish the internship program as well as the internship report in a scheduled time in spite of various complications. I am also thankful that my team which helped me to meet my internship objectives. I felt scared at the beginning but at some point then I started to feel comfortable with the team and atmosphere. Day by day, I began expressing my ideas and opinions. They were very friendly to hear and discuss in our almost daily meetings. Moreover, encouraged me to face difficulties, tough and easy work on my own. They literally taught me how to work professionally and believed in my passion to accomplish my goals. At this point of my life, putting in my mind to form the path of increasing my skills and responsibilities is all what I aim to. Taking an internship at a media and advertising agency would helped me find that advertising includes consumer demographic research, focus groups, knowledge of a client’s pricing and distribution strategies, and media research and buying.
I am looking forward to accomplish my management internship at the same agency as I am very happy to stay with them after my second internship ends hopefully. As now we know each other very well and I enjoyed working and learning with them. I learned how the system of the company is and how the techniques they work with are and how they apply them into the jobs and tasks they have to provide a pond to the clients requested jobs.
This internship was a pleasure and a big opportunity to me. It made me build a full image of the whole well being of a media and advertising agency. It also showed me how to deal internally and externally with people to get by tasks done on time. It was a very informative and joyful experience that I would like to repeat.
