My project started at quite a broad note and I decided to talk to as many people as I could to gain more insight into how I want to structure it. And in my first month itself, I unknowingly took away my biggest learning: initiative. People are helpful but nobody has the time to spoon feed you. You need to take initiative and furthermore prove yourself resourceful so people consider it worthwhile to invest their time in you. I figured that the brand was facing a different problem in different chains. I decided to incorporate four such live problems in my project and spent the next month in finding solutions for them.
And in the second month I learnt my second biggest lesson: stakeholder management. I was formulating four solutions which shaped four pillars of my project: Consumer Behaviour, Sales, Innovation and Communication. Each problem had to be solved for a different chain which aggravated the challenge for me as I had to coordinate with both the internal and external stakeholder for each chain while keeping my mentor on top of everything, all in a period of one month. I further wanted to draw each solution to the stage of implementation with a cost benefit analysis so that each idea is as feasible as it is creative.
However post my mid-review when my mentor and I sat to see through the project one last time before we moved towards wrapping it up, we felt it lacked one final punch as she wanted me to represent my understanding of the brand and the category for both its current and future potential. For this I decided to carry out a research study parallel to my live projects, in an attempt to identify a few upcoming category trends and how we can tap them. And here I took away my third biggest learning from this internship and I must say it came right on time for I believe that is what truly gave me an edge and helped me earn the Best Intern Award at the end.
The truth is that it is your project and no one knows it better than you. You will have all the answers about how you did it and why you did it but what they want to know is what you did over and above it. You need to display your understanding of both the category and the brand along with the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead of you today and can spring up tomorrow.
And of course, it would be unfair to say that I did this all of this on my own. I had a mentor who knew exactly when to be lenient and let me explore on my own, and when to be strict and re-direct me. The key was communication. Further, the very supportive and energetic Garnier team taught me a new thing every day I sat with them, which was the final cherry on the delicious cake I had for the two most enriching months of my life.
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