Fifteenth Entry: December 8^th Nearing my final hours in my internship and it’s quite exciting. I’m happy to have been a part of a wonderful and committed group of people looking to really help a company move forward and get better everyday. It’s no surprise that they’ve chosen that as the tagline on Twitter or even their e-mail accounts, because it’s so fitting. I had to ask for approval to use certain Flyers and Ads for my presentation tomorrow. They’ve wanted me to be fairly quiet with company details as it can lead to unwanted misinformation. Most of my Power-Point will consist of my experience working there and detailing the Creative and Economical process that occurs in the office. I’ve learned that a lot of design must meet certain requirements when being showcased to the public. I have just about 3 more meeting left to complete the amount of hours needed for class, however I may be continuing my partnership with Marketing team into February since we’ve made so much progress and I’d hate to not be apart of it. After checking in with Mr. Mcphoy, I’m currently at 111 Hours. I always talk to him about schoolwork, so he’s rooting for me to come out on top. Kevin had been extremely supportive in giving me ideas on my Senior Project and Interactive Advertising class. Although he claims he isn’t that artistic, he makes very good judgment call when it comes to design.

Fourteenth Entry: December 1^st I didn’t notice it until now, but I’m 92 Hours in and I feel as if I finally just started picking up momentum. I believe in the earlier weeks of the internship I was trying to find out where I fit in and how my voice could be of assistance. But now it’s like another family. Everyone is also making jokes and discussing current events that make you understand the personal side to these professionals. They were completely normal, and far from stuck-up as I initially saw them to be. (Hopefully, if they ever were to read this, they know where I’m coming from). I remember the first day I walked in, hardly anyone was smiling and they were conference calls every other day for sales results and compliance in the retail stores.

We now are actively advertising the 50% off Plans in NYC. We were able to get the approval for a Bus that projects a digital Ad roughly 20 feet wide on its side. This particular bus is meant to drive slowly on major Avenues to bring the most attention to the Ad it is displaying.

We are currently working on many Flyer Variations for the 50% off promotion. So I’m hoping at least 3 of 10 get approved for mass distribution! I’m also looking forward to Thanksgiving of coarse.

Twelfth Entry: November 18^th.  Today was interesting, mostly because we once again had the opportunity to pitch a few ides for a commercial spot regarding a new plan. Everything has to be well though out, because both new and existing customer see the promotional offers and the representatives in the Corporate locations must be equipped to answer anything that gets thrown their way. 70 Hours wrapped up.

Eleventh Entry: November 10^th. I’ve decided to part ways with my Cre@tive Design Internship to focus primarily on my Internship with Sprint. The hours are more flexible with my schedule and most of the work is very hands on. I’m learning a lot about finances and market research. Kevin had given the Team a task to survey people in the park on what they expect from their Wireless carriers, and were asked to rank the Carriers based on what they know so far. Sadly, to say Sprint wasn’t at the forefront of their answers. A lot of the damage was due to a poor network build out of the LTE services, which caused a large shift in perception. This outdoor mission lasted about 2 hours, in which I had to then relay the information the head of Market Research in the department, Anna. She took a look at the results and mentioned how it lined up with what the company had suspected.

Ever since Marcelo became CEO, there has been a large focus on trying to gain subscriber growth, but that would be very difficult if customers felt the service was unreliable. A lot of the new game plan, has to do with how people on the front line shape the consumers, i.e. the Retail Locations and Customer Care. Both aspects of the business interacted with the customers directly and decided whether or not the customer will recommend your service to a family member or friend. If you have a person who is willing to promote a brand, chances are you will have a better chance of growth – even without Advertising or Commercializing plans or new devices. The Team spent the past 3 days focusing on perception on the consumer level. Almost 12 hours collecting data. Some people couldn’t understand why AT&T and Verizon customers were being offered “Half Off’ rate plans, but T-Mobile customers were not. They felt it was unfair and that T-Mobile was in fact the true rival to Sprint since they past Sprint earlier this year. They’ve had the largest spike in subscriber additions in 8 years. In wrapping up my meetings yesterday, Kevin advised that I was at 61 hours so far, and could easily achieve 100 by December if I kept the meetings consistent. It’s not necessarily an easy thing to accomplish, but I’m determined. My last few weeks have been – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10 AM – 2PM. I’ve made arrangement with my manager to schedule me for closing shifts and sacrificing my lunch break to make this possible.

Tenth Entry: November 3^rd. Wow, November already, the time is just flying by. My nerves have not gotten any better, I’m still just as tense and they doodling has subsided a bit. I’ve been doing a bit of reading this time around.

 In regards to my Internships, Cre@tive Designs has been kind of touch and go. Everything is remote work. Rico will e-mail me something then call me immediately after, to see if I got it. He doesn’t pressure me on any work AT ALL. Which I find both very intriguing and annoying. Right now I’m illustrating a few tattoo designs for a start-up digital-pen company, Lera. He’s so hands off that when I e-mail him some ideas back, he just replies…”Not bad, trying adding some more detail and some color.” I’m dying for him to be MORE specific. Sprint, on the other hand, has been really uplifting.

Starting every meeting with a cup of coffee is nice. It’s become a ritual, as if no one in that entire office has any issues with caffeine. Linda, one of the interns there is always bugging me, “Hey, Travis are you alive and awake? Need some coffee?” Everyone must be addicts or something, but I don’t complain. I suppose they just really want to make sure everybody has the energy to get work done, especially since we are sitting a majority of the time, they don’t want the day to drag. We start off with round table discussions on this we found interesting in the week, whether it be Ad related or just something in the news. Katie, one of the managers who works with Kevin, is persistent in picking my brain for something interesting.

Sprint actually posted the campaign online that I was referencing last week, about a few days ago. Right on Halloween if I’m not mistaken. Here’s the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh5zfHgeVr8. I love the added graphics to the logo and the new #MoveForward tag. Before it used to be #GettingBetterEveryday. It’s a better approach with move forward since the message is the same and the hashtag itself comes across easier. It’s short and sweet. When our meetings are over for the week, I have to catch Kevin up to speed to make sure he’s logging everything in. “Don’t sweat it, you worry too much. I think you’re at 20 hours total or something…or was it 2 and a half?” Rest assured I know I’m at 48. I shouldn’t always look into it so much, but I overwhelmed with the semester and can’t afford to lose track of time.

Ninth Entry: October 29^th. In much of my exhaustion, I find time to space out and sketch. Endlessly illustrating and mocking up something from my imagination with pencil and paper is therapeutic. It allows me to step away from all technology and distractions of the real word to just, be me (as if I’m not already). I can admittedly say I am exhausted, but I’m just around the bend. Senior Project, Interning, WORK, and finally my third class “Interactive Design” have left me running around with my head off. It’s all too much, however I’ve been getting through most of my work by making an old fashioned To-Do-List.

Making a hierarchy of things I must accomplish before I can move onto my next task, seems to work fairly well. Checking off each thing as I go along! Wiping my brow in relief once it complete! I never knew the satisfaction of just scratching off a title on a list, as if you wanted to die, until just recently.

Apart from doing a couple of Twitter posts at the Sprint Internship, we’ve been trying to get the rest of the marketing Team on board with Snapchat. I try to contribute at least 3 days of the week to interning at roughly 6 hours. They aren’t always available when I am, but I’d like to say I’m on the right track. So far Kevin says he’s logged about 39 hrs. Which is very impressive, the time has kind of been flying. The company sort of needs and edgier side. For example: John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, is a character in his own right. I follow his antics online because he’s so flamboyant and obnoxious. He’s a direct reflection of his company. You’re not just providing a service, you are providing an experience. It’s one of the things we try not immolate with our new approaches, but we have to acknowledge it to become better.

Our department submitted a few ideas a couple weeks ago regarding how we’re “setting the stage in wireless”, and the Advertising Team in Kansas kindle ran with it, into a unique direction with their “Listen up Campaign”. It’s basically a commercial where a real life situation is made fun of, like a sitcom and Sprint’s promotion kind of saves the day. The minute the video is available online, I’ll try to post it up.  It’s nice to know you helped contribute to a bigger idea.

My more concrete work recently has been, drafting up a few Flyers for new product announcements and plans. They’re somewhat conservative here, but they appreciate my “youthful eyes” as they call it.

Eighth Entry: October 21^st

In the 21 hours I’ve spent working in the Sprint’s Marketing Office at 1166, I’ve come to realize that the Marketing Team always has something new they want to brainstorm and usually comes up with several ideas that we end up filtering down to three. It’s feels like the Design Team course in a lot of ways. Every time I arrive, the procedure is identically to one another.

When I first head into the building, I show my ID-badge and all my bags are scanned through security. I arrive on the second floor, where am buzzed in by the Front Desk Guard who signs me in (this helps Kevin confirmed what time I arrive and what time I leave). I walk down the hall to our conference room where I meet with Anna, Ron, Mikel and Jose, the Market team members. We essentially have refreshments and get ourselves situated before we begin to go over promotions that working and those that aren’t.

Local businesses are then brought up, in which we go over planning outbound events for these business and how we are going to prepare Flyers. I log-on to the workstations there, where they have Adobe Photoshop and InDesign, as well as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. These are other programs in the computer but these are the 4 that the use the most. Most of the Flyers are mocked on InDesign, while the Images are retouched in Photoshop.

There have been two occasions in which I visited that we only worked on Tweets, nothing visual at all. We had to phrase different promotions so that they linked to the correct Hashtags and Websites while staying within the appropriate 140-character count for Twitter. After we narrowed them down to a few, we sent them out for approval.

Seventh Entry: October 14^th

I’ve taken the time to dissect the inner marking of “Social Animal” by David Brooks, as discussed in the New Yorker. His article’s subtitle reads, “How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life.” After completing the article, and glancing back at that subtitle it aids you in summing up the experience of the human unconsciousness and how powerful it is. Success is largely dependent on how deeply others can relate to you. Emotional ties, social interaction and common relations of the norms are crucial in developing individuals for a success.

“If the study of the conscious mind highlights the importance of reason and analysis, study of the unconscious mind highlights the importance of passions and perception. If the outer mind highlights the power of the individual, the inner mind highlights the power of relationships and the invisible bonds between people”

In the article we are given two people, Harold and Erica throughout their youth, adolescence, career choices, marriage, and retirement. Both Harold and Erica were created to show every aspect of the “Social Animal”, including education, socialization, and morality. They have roller-coaster of lessons in their experiences. Through it all, both learn to adapt and grow as individuals as even as a couple. They both achieve success in their fields by imitating the philosophies set forth by Mr. Brooks. His attempt is to make us more aware of the subconscious perceptions others may have of us, so that we may utilize it to our advantage. To embrace all ties we have to our circumstances, to help shape the greatness in our lives.

It was an exhausting-ly in-depth, yet fascinating read. Unfortunately, due to issues in scheduling at work, I had to cover today’s Wednesday shift missing our 7th class meeting, but I was sure to post the necessary entries to the site.

As mentioned on My First Blog Entry for September 8th, after finally finding the correct OpenLab Internship site, I’ve transferred  ALL of the Blogs I had been working on so from the last few weeks into this Course Profile.

Previously I was a part of an identical site for the Fall 2015 Semester under Professor Joel Mason and “tgoetz” (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/comd-4900-communication-design-internship-fall-2015/). Wilson, Huseyin, and I had been the only members of this particular profile, but then found it alarming that I had been the only individual providing entries. Luckily my investigation led me to this here, which is better late than never, I presume.

Sixth Entry: October 9^th

In reading the article “Creation Myth” by Malcolm Gladwell, the major message I was able to pull from the reading was that innovation is made from the failures of others. Not one person can birth a successful new idea, but rather a different approach that utilizes the missed opportunities of others.

Originality and innovation are closely related. We think of creative innovators as people with new ideas, but to read Malcolm Gladwell on this topic is to be reminded of a difference. “An innovator may not be the one with the new idea but the one with a new take on an old idea”. Jobs is the thief in the night and Xerox is the unfortunate fool. Jobs understood that it had to change in a dramatic way before it could become viable. You don’t want to be first; you want to be second or third. Facebook isn’t the first in social media, they’re the third and in retrospect, if you look at Steve Jobs’ history, he’s never been first.

I’ve come to realize this is very true in my Internships. A lot of our working ideas are from that of a company who has failed at doing something a certain way. In order to be successful we have to differentiate. Sometimes it means to “reinvent the wheel”.

Fifth Entry: October 2^nd

I’m excited! After nearly 4 weeks organizing my time with Senior Project, Work, Classes and looking the right internship, I’ve managed to land TWO who were willing to work with my schedule. Sprint and Cre@tive Design Studio. 

My Internship with Sprint was a path I should’ve taken a while ago as I work only 5 blocks away from the Corporate building at 1166 Avenue of the Americas. In found out about the position though an employee newsletter posted by Ryan Cobb, B2B Sales Consultant, for “Volunteer Design and Social Media”. After sharing emails back and forth, I met with him at the Office where he confirmed they’d be able to monitor the hours needed for Internship credits. Although Ryan Cobb is the one who helped me get the position, he doesn’t work in this particular department. He spends most of his time meeting with potential business clients. Our first briefing was on Thursday during my lunch break, where I spent the hour going over what the departments expectations were.

A majority, if not all of the work, I will be doing for Sprint’s NY Marketing Team the will be reviewed by Kevin McPhoy. Kevin is the Field Marketing Manager who proofs all the Literature and Social Media posts for the New York Area/ Northeast Region. I would consider Kevin as my direct supervisor, as he oversees all the designs and logs all the time I have spent in the office or working on LITs (Literature Packets/ Promotional Posters). We’ve arranged to have our meetings correspond with my shifts at Bryant Park, in which I’d allocating time during my lunch breaks or at the end of my shifts for Monday, Tuesday, and/or Friday.

The second Internship, with Square Cre@tive Design Studio, base in Long Island City. The Manager Rico is currently seeking projects to give me, so I can work from home. I’ve met with him on two occasions in person, but the majority of our communication is through text and e-mail at the moment while I await for assistance on new projects.