Work experience: Rebika Rai//
Rebika Rai, a year 13 student from Bromsgrove School joined us in August for a week’s work experience. Here’s a blog post that she’s written about her experience and how it’s helped her plan for the future…
Despite the fact I was twenty minutes late for my first ever work experience, I was still welcomed by the warm smiles of the Factor 3 family.
I was given a quick tour of the building by Daniel, the agency’s talented (multi-tasking) copywriter; he introduced me to the rest of the team from the account management, digital and creative departments. He explained how the different departments work together, and I recognised that a cooperative and dynamic work ethic is essential in the marketing and advertising industry. Even with their hectic schedule, Daniel and Liz (a brilliant art director) gave me an insight in to the industry’s energetic and fast paced nature. In fact, Liz shared some of her previous work for an under floor heating company and I was inspired by the immense difference from her first draft to her final design. She taught me that there is always room for improvement and that you can always find inspiration around you.
Along with the work experience comes the professional environment, where I was delighted to be given my own desk, and made to feel like part of the team. The atmosphere was calm yet I could sense that everyone was occupied in something that had an imminent deadline. In fact, Daniel mentioned that each agency offers their own individual environment, but at Factor 3 he has the flexibility of being able to cross over the different aspects of advertising and is found one minute drawing a video storyboard and the next, talking to clients over the phone.
As a year 13 student suddenly immersed in the advertising world, I was glad to be familiarised with the different departments of the agency – eventually realising that I was interested in social media far more than any other marketing discipline. This has strongly influenced the university course I want to study and also the area of marketing I want to pursue. I also learnt a lot about marketing and advertising account management thanks to Gemma (an experienced account manager). She could not emphasise enough how important a good brief is to a project and gave me an entire presentation on why Virgin Trains is so successful in their commercials. I found it incredibly useful as the brief is single-handedly the most vital part of the project. To get a full understanding of a brief, I was assigned my own creative brief to design a bank and money app aimed at children aged 8-18-years-old. I enjoyed creating tag lines and designing the artwork for the app and from just that one experience I took into account the great pressure of doing it all in a short period of three days- it was intense!
The presentation from Prabha (an enthusiastic digital project manager) was my ultimate inspiration. Now, I’m keen to explore the endless strategies in marketing from the social media aspect. I came to learn that I like how inventive and infinite social media is and the flexibility of working in different sectors whether it be working on e-mails or TV ads; I liked how social media offers boundless and refreshing opportunities to reach and pull in customers.
Last but not least, I was given a final creative review by Daniel and Liz who have undoubtedly contributed to this worthwhile experience. I’m grateful as all my questions were answered and I felt reassured by Factor 3 who told me that there isn’t one route to get to the marketing industry; It can be attained by doing what you love. Hearing stories of how they worked to get where they are has motivated me to choose a path that I will enjoy. Daniel said “I love my job; it doesn’t feel like a job because on a Sunday morning I’m not moaning about going to work the next morning. In fact, I look forward to it.”