Category Archives: Advertising business

Are you really ready to hire an agency? 4 Questions to ask yourself.

Posted in Advertising business, entrepreneurism, hiring an agency, Public Relations, Uncategorized, When to hire an ad agency? by

You’re an entrepreneur or a small business that hasn’t had the funds up until now to hire outside marketing or PR services. Fortunately for you, business is looking good and you can now consider spending some marketing dollars.

Before you even narrow down your short list of possible agencies you’d like to work with, you need to ask yourself the following questions. If you can’t answer “yes” to all of these questions, you may want to consider holding off your decision until you can.

1) Am I ready to trust someone else with my business goals? Trust issues and entrepreneurism often go hand in hand. Your can-do spirit, hard work and laser vision have brought you where you are today, but realize that even the best leaders can’t do it all alone. You need to go into a new partnership with optimism and a certain level of trust.

2) Am I ready for a partnership, or do I just want an order taker? Agency-client relationships are doomed from the start if you are just looking for “yes” men. If you care about your business, isn’t it best to hear out and respect other points of view that could possibly lead to a great insight and subsequent break though for your business?

3) Can my ego take it if someone has better ideas than me? Yes, it’s great that you have landed where you are by working your fingers to the bone and making great business decisions for yourself and your company. Moving forward with marketing experts on board, can you be objective enough to hear them out if one of your ideas isn’t considered the best approach or will you take your marbles and run?

4) Am I patient enough to give a partnership time to grow and settle in? Or is your attitude, “what have you done for me today?” As with any type of relationship, business relationships work best when both parties are committed to shared goals and a common outcome. Sure there will be bumps along the way as you both get accustomed to each other, but only a partnership that’s in it for the long haul can achieve the results you want.

5 Ways to Make Your Internship Program a Win-win for You and Your Intern

Posted in Advertising business, intership, interns, Marketing, Media Relations, Public Relations by

You’ve hired your summer interns, but are you doing your best to ensure that they and your organization are getting the most out of the experience?

There is no doubt that internships should be a mutually beneficial experience for the employer and the intern. Too often, I hear about disappointing internships where an intern’s primary responsibilities were relegated solely to making copies, answering phones, organizing online files or making frequent coffee runs.

While students should embark onto an internship experience knowing there will be a fair amount of clerical (aka grunt) work, the point of an internship is that it provides a real educational opportunity for students to receive hands-on, real-life training in the field of their major. Many former interns will admit that their internship experience was far more valuable in their decision to pursue their career than anything they learned from textbooks and classroom lectures.

I understand that you are a busy executive and that you don’t have the time (and possibly the patience) to hover over an intern all day. I don’t think you should have to, but I do firmly believe that as well-established experts in our field, we have an obligation to guide our industry’s future leaders, just as our mentors did for us.

In order to prevent any daily hand-holding sessions, employers can adhere to a few tricks of the trade I’ve acquired over my years overseeing various agency internship programs.

What Employers Can Do

1. Make a job description and stick to it
Doing this lets the intern understand the required duties but also lets your team know the boundaries of what they can and can’t ask of an intern. Once you get to know your intern’s capabilities and skill set, you may be able to add some specific tasks to the job description.

2. Have a program/timeline in place
Interns need structure. Don’t expect your intern to wait enthusiastically each day for you to decide what projects to give him or her. Understanding that you can’t anticipate every scenario, at lease have some structure and consistency in the program/schedule (e.g., Every Thursday is a “Lunch and Learn” session where the intern(s) brown bag their lunch and listen to company experts talk about their job and provide career advice)

3. Make the internship an enriching experience.
It’s typically understood that interns will be given a fair amount of grunt work, but make sure you allow them to have access to real business experiences. A client conference call may not seem like an exciting activity for you, but it can be a great learning experience for an intern.

4. Be a mentor
I know you are a very busy person, but as I stated earlier, I believe we professionals owe it to those interested in our field to provide them with an accurate glimpse into the field they would like to enter and the skill set needed. Make it a weekly habit to monitor your intern and give them feedback – whether it’s positive or negative – since it’s part of the learning process that lectures and textbooks can’t teach. Lead by example.

5. Don’t’ burn bridges.
Let’s face it, we’ve all been burned by a bad intern experience. As much as you’re ready to boot them out the door or vow never to have another one again, remember that the interns are still very young and don’t have much finesse in professional settings. And, though it’s hard to imagine, you never know how your paths might meet again (your intern’s aunt might be the contact you’ve been wooing for new business for years).

Best wishes for a great internship partnership this summer. If you have any additional tips to how you make internships an all-around success, please feel free to share them.