The New Reality Of Learning On The Job - From Bed
Before COVID-19 hit, working from home seemed to many like a luxury, nor was it something typically offered at companies for potential internships. Yet thanks to the pandemic, remote working has become the "new normal" for many around the world.
Hollywood Branded chose the path of embracing remote internships, and was better positioned than many in Hollywood due to having video conferencing and online project management systems already in place.Regardless, working from home is definitely a big adjustment and for employees and interns at Hollywood Branded, it's been a big learning experience - where we actually did get to learn! In this blog, Hollywood Branded is going to walk you through what it’s like to have a remote internship with Hollywood Branded and how the workdays are spent.
Adjusting To The "New Normal"
As summer is coming to an end for many students and school year is starting back up, most people, including me, thought COVID-19 would be over by now. The reality is, COVID’s still here and students all around the world are continuing their education and internships online. Luckily for me, when I applied to Hollywood Branded, I knew that it would mostly be remote work and I mentally prepared myself to work remotely.
You may be wondering to yourself, “Remote internship? Impossible. There is no way a company or student could be successful in an internship without doing it in person.” Trust me; I thought the same thing.
When Covid-19 hit in the middle of March, I was mad, frustrated and, above all, disappointed in the way that my junior year of college suddenly went from "go, go, go," to "go home and stay there" until who knows when. I could think of all the things I could and should have been doing in my last few months of college, but being angry at the world was not going to help me in any way. So, I turned to my new favorite social app, LinkedIn, and was determined to find an internship.
Fast forward to a few weeks later, I scored an internship with this entertainment marketing agency you may know: Hollywood Branded! Being accepted to Hollywood Branded was hands down the best thing that happened to me during Covid-19.
Morning Coop!
*Cue the morning rooster call*
Every morning the days are started with what we call “The Coop.” This is where all team members and interns get together on Zoom and we discuss the plans and agenda for the day. The morning coop is a great way to start the day because you get to see everyone’s faces and hear what other interns have to do, and if for some reason your day is slow, you can help a fellow intern out and do one of their tasks.
When everyone is finished sharing their to-do list, we do this fun game called, “Sing For Thanks.” Sing For Thanks is a time where a team member has the opportunity to sing in front of everyone, if they can guess the song lyric put up on the board. If you’re like me and singing is not your forte, that is A-OK because the team does not judge, even if you sing a completely different song than the lyrics put up on the board (which is exactly what I did last week). The culture of the Hollywood Branded team is fun, nonjudgmental, and accepting, so being nervous or scared is a feeling foreign to us interns right from the beginning of our internship.
After Sing For Thanks, we end the morning coop and go on with our daily tasks. It may seem scary at first to go on with your day without having “supervision,” but every team member has a designated point of contact from the core team and we are able to contact them at any point of the day to get help or check in to see how we are doing. Working from home allows for more independent work, but the entire team and interns are still motivated, even without supervision. Working from home taught me how to balance and manage my time better, in knowing what tasks need to be done immediately and focus my attention on the more important stuff and then proceed down the ladder of tasks I have.
During The Day
One of the first things that stood out to me when I applied to Hollywood Branded was in the application it said, “At this internship, interns don’t just go run and grab coffee, or in our case Grubhub coffee to our superiors, and send emails; we provide our interns with hands on learning and active engagement between core members and interns.” They weren’t lying when this was written because there is so much for interns to do during the day:
- Join brainstorms and contribute creative ideas to upcoming projects.
- Agency training exercises to learn the ins and outs of all the tools and applications Hollywood Branded uses.
- Read scripts for up and coming potential movies and television shows
- Identify placements within television, video game, feature film, digital and music content, a.k.a- we get to watch Netflix DURING work.
- Research celebrities, influencers, current market trends and assist in crafting sales and marketing materials.
- Create social media content for all platforms, like TikTok and Instagram.
These are just some of many tasks an intern gets to be part of and even though the internship is remote, the opportunity to learn these skills is more than possible with the help of our new work best friends Zoom and Slack. At any point in the day if an intern needs help or advice, a team member is there to help. We hop on their Zoom line and everything will get figured out. I ask a TON of questions, and there has not been one time where a team member or fellow intern was not there for me.
Another interoffice communication tool that has been helpful is Slack. Slack is essentially a chat room for your office, and its purpose serves to replace having to send emails as the form of communication between co-workers. In other words, Slack is a more professional way to text people and get a faster response.
A fun thing I learned to do during the workday with fellow interns is to FaceTime anyone if I have a question. A piece of advice that I would offer is call an intern during the workday and do your work together over the phone. My friend Brandon and I would always do work together on Facetime and it made the day much more enjoyable and it felt like we were in the office together.
Ending Coop
We have finally made it to the end of the day and I’m normally exhausted, but proud of myself by this point with all the tasks. With all the assignments and projects we have to get done, the day goes by pretty quickly. We have an end of the day ending coop around 5:15 P.M. and the whole team regroups on Zoom and we wrap up. During this time everyone shares one “win” of the day they accomplished, and we listen and hype everyone and their achievements up. Once the “wins” are done being said, we end the call and that is the day in the life of a Hollywood Branded Remote Internship.
But, if you are like me and are kind of a workaholic, I always end up doing work afterwards to stay ahead or finish up on some of my projects.
One of my favorite parts of this internship is the fact that none of us interns have ever met, and we are all over the country in different states, but it does not feel that way. All of us interns have bonded, even over zoom (imagine that!), so I cannot begin to think of what it would have been like if we were all in the office together. The end of the day is nice and quick and acts as another time we all get to see each other and interact as a whole.
Real Life Testimonials
Fortunately , I live in Southern California, so missing out on the LA life of the internship wasn’t an issue, but I was worried about not making connections or friendships with the other interns. Getting to interact with other people and doing work as a team is the fun part of any job and I was bummed that I would have to try and make these connections over Zoom. I thrive off people’s energy in a room, so I was nervous about only using technology as a means of communicating, but to my surprise I was wrong.
Thanks to the Hollywood Branded Team, I made connections with the team and my fellow interns that I know will last a lifetime. Hollywood Branded did an amazing job at making this internship educational, fun, and collaborative and there were multiple team building activities we did to strengthen our bonds and here are some examples:
- Intern Q and A: CEO Stacy Jones leads the Q and A for an hour of her time, to answer questions with us interns. This helps Stacy and us interns learn more about one another and we can ask her questions about the entertainment industry and even life.
- Team Thank You’s: The “Thank You’s” are an internal form of showing gratitude within the team. This serves as an easy way to simply show your thanks to someone for doing anything ranging to work related topics or even a thank you for hyping someone up before their Zoom date!
- Intern Bonding: A tool that helped us interns really bond, was our weekly intern bondings every Thursday. This was a time for the interns to just chat and truly get to know each other, without our superiors there. Us interns during this bonding created an intern Snapchat and Group Chat, so that also helped up stay up with one another and make this experience enjoyable for all of us!
- Forced Fun: Every Friday from 4:00-5:00 p.m. we do an hour of team bonding, where we talk about anything but work. Every Forced Fun has a theme, so during this hour you get to dress up and add your favorite Zoom virtual background for the hour! My favorite theme was pop stars, I dressed up as Britney Spears! Below is an example of a Forced Fun where we had to show our baby picture!
Some of our intern team from this summer came together to share why Hollywood Branded is such a great company with an amazing Internship Program.Here is a testimonial video from us interns to show you how great and awesome of an experience we have had here at this summer!
To see what a typical day might look like for the team and past intern when actually NOT remote... read Hollywood Branded's blog A Day In the Life At Hollywood Branded or the blog Day In The Life Of An Internship At Hollywood Branded.
Check out the e-book by clicking the image below to learn more about how product placement works, or watch any of the videos and e-books above to get a better understanding of what you will be doing!
