Imagine if MBA was the next obvious choice in your life; not your career, but your life. I felt so. I was stuck, stagnant and didn’t have a way forward. No, I was not a frustrated IT Engineer, but I wished to be doing something at some place which was exciting, and felt MBA was the right next step. And if it was so, what would you do to make it the best? It could vary from person to person.
For me, my internship was going to be the most important experience of my MBA journey. This would be the first time I will be considered better than a mere Engineer, and somebody who’s about to break into the scene of Managing a business in just 2 years. I looked forward to it eagerly and expectedly, ready to give my best and rule the world.
I joined U Digital Pvt. Ltd. (Arre.co.in) officially as an intern in the department of Ad sales on 15
th of April 2019. It was a day of reckoning, because Arre brought together all the worlds I wished to be a part of and that too in a startup-like environment, backed by the largest network in India – Viacom. In case you are unaware, Arre is one of the largest content producers in the country for a company of such a small size, and our content, especially in the written category, has always attracted eyeballs more than anyone in this nation. We take up issues, events, memories, landmarks and convert them into conversational pieces. Arre’s USP has always been about having the conversation from an angle nobody could see.
Arre has various formats of content ranging from Short videos, web-series, documentaries, MIFs (Mobile Intuitive Formats), Typographics, Doodles, among many others, while catering to categories from special events, daily life to passion points like music, outdoors, etc. Our shows have done great and with a considerable distribution network, it’s highly regarded in the digital content space.
The digital content space is ever evolving with brands constantly looking out for content creators to relate to the consumer which mostly comprises of the Millennials. And I was lucky to have had a chance to learn and more than that contribute to this industry with the support of my learnings at MICA. My experience was around three different sectors – Sales, Marketing and Brand Solutions.
In sales, I was responsible to maintain a sheet which had a list of possible, past and present clients. I started with cold calling and fixing meetings for my mentors, which I would attend too. Now “Sales” was something that I had an experience in. My first job right after my engineering was in Sales and I was working for Hafele India Pvt. Ltd. in their Appliances division. I was pretty successful there so I was confident about this as well. However, B2B is a very different ball game, for when you are dealing with businesses, they have more options and their scale is much higher than say a dealer in Kolkata. I was interacting with agencies, FMCG clients, banks and clients from many other fields. This taught me how media sales worked in the digital world, how did the deals for ads were formed and what was it that these brands from a plethora of different industries expected from a digital content producer such as Arre.
My next experience brought me to the space of Marketing. This work started when a deal had formed between a client and Arre, entailing a certain list of deliverables promised to the participants. E.g., an E-commerce giant had partnered with Arre during the IPL season to promote themselves through digital content, sketches, articles, etc. Now while the content was created and pushed out, it was my job to look at the deliverables enlisted under the marketing of such a product.
So, social media posts of Arre, the brand, influencers and other stakeholders had to be put out in an orderly fashion while following a calendar for the same. This was one of the examples amongst 3-4 major marketing projects of some of the largest clients in India that were given to me. While we keep talking about digital marketing and how digital marketing is taking the advertising and marketing industry by storm, I got to experience it first hand by working for various brands and handling their campaigns, at a smaller level but with full freedom.
The last world I was exposed to was the space of brand solutions and for me, this was the most exciting space, for this is the space which generated the majority of our revenues. Brand solutions entailed a multi-level process of going from brief to production. Decoding the brief, brainstorming concept ideas, and brand integrations and finally presenting the concepts to the client, while competing with other agencies. And while working for brand solutions as well I was exposed to clients from various industries – FMCG, Digital Audio (Podcasts and Music), BFSI, among many others.
This was an enriching experience as our learnings from MICA were put to maximum use while working in this department. I learned how understanding the core competency of brands, their philosophy, their targets, their culture, need to be a part of the brand integration we propose to them.
All in all, the experience of 2 and a half months taught me a myriad of things about the media industry, which I was looking forward to the most before joining MICA. This experience was enriching and helped me evolve with a new perception from the lens of a new industry.
Write to me on
ritwik18@micamail.in if you have any personal queries about MICA, my internship or about life in general.