JJ, the intern at our sister agency Mabox, has written a blog about his experience during his internship:
“It is important to note that this was not written under duress, and while it may seem like a piece of ruthless propaganda, I have learnt a lot at Mabox and even found myself enjoying myself.
When I came to Mabox I expected a number of things that I didn’t get:
1) large bean bags
2) people with nerd glasses
3) skinny jeans
4) an inhouse Japanese sanctuary or washitsu
I was disappointed about the sanctuary but actually fairly relieved about the rest (I apologise insincerely to skinny jean wearing nerd glasses owners everywhere, I too suffer from the regular inability to get things out of my jean pockets). The interview was informal and both sides were refreshingly honest, I about my complete lack of marketing experience, they about the fact that I wouldn’t be pitching like Don Draper everyday of the week.
When I met the whole team they seemed nice and then continued to be so through the entire thing, apart from the occasional misplaced comment about my outlandish knitware. The work started fairly mechanically building up from data entry, but soon I was working on pitches and on the production of actual marketing tools. If you don’t know about format painter or any of the intricacies of the Microsoft Office suite I would advise getting savvy as a substantial portion of your work is likely to include it. On the plus side once you know that kind of thing, it not only helps you work but also will help impress future employers.The structure of the team is really flat so you don’t get people waving their authority about, but it does mean that you are expected to be able to work with some autonomy. You also get the rare and surprising benefit of the boss making an intern tea!
There are many benefits to the job as a whole, you do get a broad spectrum of experience and an effort is made for you to try new things with ever greater responsibilities. They are patient with questions, to the extent that you feel bad about asking them far before they grow tired of answering them. You will most definitely gain an in depth knowledge of one of Mabox’s specialities and you will see a project through from inception to implementation. Finally you may, if you’re lucky or Tim’s bored, find yourself in Tim’s boat, which whilst slightly less glamorous than it sounds is also slightly less stressful and weird as well.
The bad points would be the saxophonist busker who insists on playing outside Mabox’s office every day, whose corpus of three songs I am now wearily familiar with. There is some grunt work but it isn’t degrading grunt work at least, and they are honest about it from the beginning. Do not apply if you are seriously allergic to dogs or the phrases ‘top level’, ‘in terms of’ and ‘thought leadership’ (all of which you will find yourself using with amazing regularity in days).
All in all Mabox is a great way to familiarise yourself with marketing in a personable and succesful marketing agency”.
JJ Tyldesley
