A different kind of internship

George Francis, Intern

In my final year of university, I got accepted to WE Buchan’s internship program as part of a three-month elective to gain industry experience.

And I soon found out that life at WE Buchan was good. Every day presented a new challenge, a new goal to achieve. From brand research, supporting social media campaigns, story pitches, brand proposals and campaign evaluation there were great learning opportunities.

My highlights? The top three experiences that I felt improved my understanding of the world of marketing and communications. These were:

• Adobe Live: Being invited to go visit one of our client’s studios in Sydney, where WE Buchan produces the weekly Adobe Livestream, where Adobe hosts influential content creators teaching creators from across APAC new tricks and tips. The experience was very insightful in understanding how the world of communication adapts to new avenue of communications that can reach are large audience outside of traditional media. But the biggest insight I gained was understanding WE Buchan’s approach to client relationships. Seeing how WE Buchan truly partners with their clients and other stakeholders to bring something special and truly valuable to the audience was insightful.
• Formulating Ideas: I’ve discovered group brainstorm sessions are integral to the agency – getting a flow of ideas from different perspectives and seeing those barely formed ideas get turned into promotional campaigns, media releases and proposals. During my first brainstorm, the first thing they told me was that there was no ‘bad’ ideas, they can be unrealistic, outlandish or out of the box, but they are not ‘bad’ cause the idea still serves a purpose, and can be reworked into something that can work.
• Finance News Network Investor Event: Investor Broker Conference, doesn’t sound overly exciting does it? It is a strange highlight to have, but it taught me the most about being a professional communicator and the valuable role PR professionals have in helping brands and businesses achieving their goals.

My biggest learning however, and in my opinion the thing that WE Buchan does differently, is their guidance from the smallest task through to the big ones.

WE Buchan’s internship program is unlike other intern experiences. The WE Buchan team walked me through the process of a small research task here, summarising reports there, which at first doesn’t seem like it matters. However, when I was then briefed on a task to sell a story to a journalist or write a proposal I realised that actually the small research task just provided me with all the information and the skills I needed to complete that bigger, more challenging undertaking.

That is the beauty of interning at WE Buchan and why it was a different kind of internship. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Send your CV to submit your interest to [email protected].