Summer at Ogilvy NYC
How it started
It started with one week reading books, two weeks working on a short story, a moment of a self-doubt before submitting the application, and an interview. Two months, when the job search for the summer turned tremendously difficult, the offer letter from Ogilvy arrived on a fine afternoon.
What is Ogilvy ?
Founded by the David Ogilvy, dubbed the Father of Advertising by some, Ogilvy is a reputed full-service agency in the advertising world, under the holding company WPP. It is an expert in many disciplines, craft, and areas of expertise when it comes to brands: advertising, social media, fame-making, public relations, consulting, and transformation.
I joined the company when it was undergoing a major transformation of its own, and thanks to that everyone has the chance to revisit and review the company’s core values and strengths.
What I did there?
I am a Strategy Intern in Social Lab, which later became the Social Practice of Ogilvy.
My work during my time in Ogilvy:
- I conducted Social Listening on conversations surrounding prospective and existing clients. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses on social media data pulled from a dedicated tool, I put together key insights to help my team understand the audience and their perception of the brands’ products and services.
- Under guidance from a senior employee, I set up ad sets and collect links with tracking tags to track performance for our ads.
- I used Excel to produce tables to summarize performance metrics or to process data from social listening tools.
- I watched and analyzed over 50 entries in Cannes Lion to find the best one for the Social Practice, then presented in a meeting broadcast to all offices in the US.
- I worked on an intern project to create and pitch an original marketing campaign to a real client. I acted as the researcher for secondary quantitative sources, strategist, and ideator. In the end, our team won the pitch.
What do I think, after everything?
The internship ended on Friday, August 3rd. I was waving goodbye and hugging my team, my project team, and the whole class of Ogilvy interns that afternoon.
After everything, I learned the foundation of almost all aspects of advertising: from research, planning, strategy, to creative, production, and (data-driven) delivery. My work in the Social Practice allows me to get in the middle of both technology and the humanities. I learned to look at conversation data for peaks, percentages, while using my understanding of culture to decipher the core idea and meaning behind the conversations. I was tasked with looking out into the industry and find the best and latest in Social, to enrich both myself and my team. I got to look into social platforms to understand them inside and out.
The best part though is to get to know the people. Ogilvy professionals are the top in their field, and despite the old, traditional name, are the most social and gregarious people I’ve seen. The whole class of interns are genuine, kind, and incredible driven. I found out that my network expanded 3 folds with them in it, and that they taught me so much during my time working on a project with them.
I completed my internship with a greater network, many more friends, and a direction. I know that the Associates Program of Ogilvy lies ahead, and I will use every bit of myself and what I learned here to get in again.
However, Ogilvy has given me the ability and strength to go seek out and pursue the opportunities. For that, I have never been more confident.