What it’s like to intern at DigitasLBi— Summer 2016
We had 3 outstanding folks write about their experiences as interns this summer in Experience Design and Video Production. These young women are smart, savvy, and ready for their next challenge. They have some wonderful insights we hope you enjoy…
“Working with this team, I have learned how to work better and faster with more impact and less bullshit.” — Rachel
Yolanda Lam
Jobs often feel like work, but work doesn’t have to feel like a job. It’s the people you work with everyday who help make that distinction. I learned this first-hand during my internship with DigitasLBi’s Experience Design team.
DigitasLBi is truly a unique place where the physical world meets the digital one. So with the doe eyes of a new intern, my summer began! Arriving in Boston, not knowing anyone or any place, the Experience Design (XD) team made me feel right at home. Their warmth and laughter was welcoming and contagious. The team is comprised of talented individuals, each of whom have an interesting background, and Demetrius, my manager, is definitely no exception.
The team’s collective goal to execute excellent deliverables has taught me to be mindful of all the elements involved and to be thoughtful in my process of creation.
I began my summer shadowing Demetrius, attending his meetings, and learning about the team. He patiently answered my questions and generously spent his time helping me get up to speed. I familiarized myself with the XD process by doing and observing, and am grateful for his guidance, providing me with a breadth and depth of experience.
The learning curve was steep at times though. As a Fine Arts major, I find it can be tough sometimes to have a good balance between data and creative thinking. My experience working with the XD team this summer has encouraged me to appreciate the conscious integration of both the numbers and the creative. I continue to learn from the brilliant minds that make up the XD team, and their ability to think holistically and meticulously.
Our team’s spirit is best demonstrated by the little things. The team holds biweekly meetings, gathering around forty members to address news relevant to the team, to share new and in-progress works, and to foster an environment where questions are encouraged from the group. Through conversation, we build the culture and principles that make up XD and DigitasLBi. Discussions about gender equality, diversity, unity, and the appreciation of everyone’s hard work is a strong display of the firm’s support for women and men alike.
The XD Love Box, a container filled with appreciative, supportive, and friendly notes, was particularly helpful in spreading the love. The notes are read aloud during our biweekly meetings and are met with copious amounts of applause and laughter. The meetings are meaningful and productive. They push work forward, the team forward, and myself forward.
As I continue to learn more about the clients, the work, and the team, the list of things I admire about the XD team continues to grow. I appreciate the close collaborative style among team members and their incorporation of different teams’ strengths to make informed, creative, and seamless user experiences. The team’s collective goal to execute excellent deliverables has taught me to be mindful of all the elements involved and to be thoughtful in my process of creation.
The XD way is hard work, teamwork, and a lotta love! Thank you to everyone who has been so generous with their time and support this summer!
Melanie Liu
Being an intern is tough. Working your ass off to impress anyone and everyone you meet challenges your brain in endless ways… it’s exhausting. Trying to find the next Lego resume idea or the next cover model on GQ is way outside my creative space to leave an impression. I get to rely on my awkwardly friendly personality. My experience as an intern falls under a much different category than my other two guest-blogging peers in a few different ways:
- I was an Integrated Production intern then transferred over to Content Production.
- I’m also a Multicultural Advertising Internship Program intern (which is a drawn-out way of saying I’m part of the diversity program DigitasLBi has become involved with for junior/senior/graduate level college students)
- I’m a recent graduate, so I’m currently looking for a job (hire me!)
To everyone at DigitasLBi, I want to thank you for opening my eyes into an industry that I barely knew existed. I feel as if I now have a vast amount of knowledge that I don’t think my brain was ready for.
I think if someone had explained that difference [between capabilities] before I was transferred, it would have been a different experience.
That being said, I do feel that there are some areas I think could stand for some improvement. (Also, as a disclaimer, I went through an entirely different application/interview process than my peers, so my experience may not reflect that of the traditional intern.)
I felt there was a disconnect between HR and the capability. I had been placed in Production before the internship started and then got moved over to Integrated Production two weeks before. When I had asked about the switch, I was told they were essentially the same (essentially being the key word). In essence, being a producer is extremely similar to Project Management — juggling multiple teams, overseeing a project from soup to nuts, etc., but it is completely different. It’s knowing what happens during treatment, what the bidding process looks like for vendors, what in post needs to be comped, mixed or colored. I think if someone had explained that difference before I was transferred, it would have been a different experience.
As students learning about the ad industry, I didn’t feel as if the intern class had enough opportunity to talk to the different capabilities. We had capability presentations, but never really had that 1:1 interaction in case I needed it. I would have loved to see more opportunities to have sessions where we just talk and mingle.
They’ve all helped me achieve goals I didn’t even know I had.
Being the person that I am, I sought out those connections myself, and it was much easier than I thought. The one thing I was constantly amazed by was this: your mentors and leaders want you to succeed. My production manager, Ben Raynes, always made sure I was getting a holistic experience and was a gladiator for me. My mentor, Dawn Bovasso, encourages me to pursue what I’m passionate about and to make sure I know my worth. Marisa Flynn (I could write volumes on how amazing/inspiring/beautiful/incredible this woman is, but I have a word count to think of). Jonathan Tompkins. Annie Lefley. Erica Casey. Martin Casiano. Yohannes Chambers. Ankita Dasgupta. Alicia Smith. John Kwon. Countless others that have made this internship experience amazing.
They’ve all helped me achieve goals I didn’t even know I had. I am forever grateful for meeting them and being inspired by them. I didn’t just learn how to succeed in this industry. I’ve been inspired by these incredible people to become a better person. Knowing that my internship experience is coming to an end, I feel an incredible amount of sadness. I am so grateful for having the opportunity to be here. I wish I could say it more eloquently or truly express how thankful I am, but I’m not a copywriter. So I hope that this was good enough.
Connect with Melanie: LinkedIn
Rachel Lindholm
It’s funny how internship application due dates align perfectly with fall semester finals. I look back and remember the question I came face-to-face with most mornings in early December.
How do I perfect every aspect of my projects, photograph them professionally using my bed sheet for a backdrop, publish the projects to my website portfolio, fill out one-million applications, all without having slept in a week?
My initial answers to these queries:
- Coffee, to keep my energy and body temperature raised; Syracuse, NY is a barren tundra come winter time.
- Perrier water, to make me feel fancy; because the realities of this time ranged from an on-the-go cereal consumption method I adopted using styrofoam cups and no spoons, to the dangerous initiatives I had taken to rig my Honda CRV into a mobile spray booth. Let’s just say, this was not my best time, so expectations surrounding internship acceptance rates were low.
To my surprise, I received a letter from DigitasLBi several months later, congratulating me on my new internship position with the Experience Design team. This is when things took a quick turn from excitement to sheer terror, as I contemplated the different scenarios that might occur, all resulting in some kind of failure from my end. My middle name should be “self-doubt”: Rachel “Self-Doubt” Lindholm.
Jump forward to my first day at DigitasLBi. I floated to work that day, not because I was ecstatic but rather due to the fleet of butterflies that lined the inside of my torso. As I entered the lobby, sweating, I went on to take my I.D. picture. This picture was not my best, in fact it might be my worst. Well, second worst to the group intern photo that is hung on the 18th floor wall — I’m the one sneezing.
This summer has given me confidence and that is the most precious tool I have ever received.
After a day of orientation we finally got to see our desks and meet our managers. I couldn’t have asked for a better manager than Matt Adams. His excitement for XD and DigitasLBi was contagious.
After getting the low-down from Matt and all our team materials, I began the process of figuring out WTF Experience Design was. I’m kind of kidding, but I did have to bookmark a page of XD terms and make flash cards for all of the acronyms I had never seen before.
So this long build-up of self-doubt and my awkward first experiences at DigitasLBi lead me to my main point. This summer has given me confidence and that is the most precious tool I have ever received from someone or something. The source of this confidence is what is truly amazing, however. In one building I was exposed to a team of people so brilliant, but so humble and warm. I felt accepted immediately — aside from some teasing I received regarding my daily lemon water. I’m lookin’ at you Erika ;). I thought I would be shunned as I was just a lowly intern, but these people believed in my abilities right off the bat; no doubts, just support. Coming into this internship as an anxious, young, self-doubting woman was unnerving, but this accepting environment was incredibly influential to moving past my own barriers.
Speaking of being a woman, this company is full of awesome ones. I love my school, my major, and all of the devoted professors that have helped me grow, but the glaring truth is that only one professor in my program is a woman. Watching these incredible women in their different roles, standing up for what they believe in, and pushing past boundaries that were set by men during prehistoric times was another crucial source of the confidence I gained. I also watched incredible men, who were backing these women up, supporting their equal rights, and treating them no differently than they would a male of the same position.
Coming into this internship as an anxious, young, self-doubting woman was unnerving, but this accepting environment was incredibly influential to moving past my own barriers.
Moving on to Experience Design. This field is everything and I am so grateful to have been exposed to it. Sure I knew what UX/XD design was but that didn’t even matter once I saw everything this team was doing. As a design student who has a great passion for print, I never would have thought I would want to work in a completely digital area of design, but coming out of this internship I know the impact XD has on everything, and I want to be a part of that.
Working with this team, I have learned how to work better and faster with more impact and less bullshit. If I could give aspiring designers a word of advice, it’s to learn what I have learned, and do it as a XD intern at DigitasLBi.
Connect with Rachel: Site
The views expressed in this post are that of the author and may not reflect the views of the agency or company.
