Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

The Crazy8 Chronicles — Week 1

The first week of my time at EP has drawn to a close, and it’s been a real whirlwind. But it’s been great. I realized a couple of things on day one. First I learned that EP was going to be an awesome place: 

After our agency tour and meet and greet with the intern committee (yes, an entire committee of ~20 employees devoted to the interns), we were introduced at the all-company meeting attended by ~300 EP employees. We made our way to the front, and in came Tony, playing a southern caricature. Using a mixture of improv, resume info, and prepared bits, he proceeded to introduce us all to the agency in a very memorable and hilarious way. This is the type of stuff I was looking for when I signed up to work for a marketing agency. It was a great day and I left the agency that evening with sore cheeks from the amount of laughter I had.

The next thing I learned (as you can tell from the image) was that Babson has taught me to be overdressed. I stuck out like a sore thumb, but hey, there could be worse things than being overdressed.

Throughout the week, we went through a thing called “EP University” with 10+ one-hour sessions from many different people in many different departments of the organization. These sessions gave us a great intro to the people and the multitude of career paths you could take just in a single agency. From experiential, to website design, to proofreading, you could do it all. It definitely shook up my thoughts about which specific parts of the agency life I wanted to go into–there was just so much good stuff to take in.

I got the chance to know my fellow interns a bit, and we’re all as brilliant as we are diverse. Creatives, PR, techies, designers–with a huge range of background, interests, goals, and experience, getting to know each and every one of my fellow interns should be a great experience in and of itself.

I met my department as well, the Digital Systems department. This is a truly innovative and pioneering department of the agency that has taken a really entrepreneurial approach to solving a need. I’m excited to see what I can do in this department this semester, especially the impact I may be able to have with my department project. Hopefully those Babson strategy classes will pay off and I can come up with ways to help this department grow!

The week culminated in learning about our agency-wide intern project and it centers around new business. The group of 8 interns were split into two teams of four. We’re charged with identifying a company’s need and developing an agency pitch to the entire agency of 300+ people (thank god for extensive presentations at Babson). If it goes over well, we’ll actually be pitching this to a real or potential client. That would be awesome.

Long story short–this week has been amazing. It affirmed all my thoughts about agencies: a collection of eclectic, diverse, brilliant, creative people coming together in an environment that allows them to stretch their mind muscles and be a part of a community. Can’t wait for tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Ross Andrew Simons

 If you liked what you read, feel free to read my other blogs posts: Infiltrate an Ad Agency — Part 1 and Infiltrate an Ad Agency — Part 2 (with 10 job-search tips!).