My internship: Sophia Month 6
Month 6: November 2014
Can't get enough - starting my second CCK internship! (Satisfaction 5 / 5)
This month has been a busy and exciting one as I have started a second Retail Operations internship with CCK - they just can't get rid of me! I'm really looking forward to being able to learn new things by working on a very different aspect of Coffee, Cake and Kisses. However, I've found already that many of the skills I've been working on for the PR and Marketing internship are transferrable, and positive communication and PR is still a key part of my new Retail Operations internship.
It is really starting to get busy this month as we are planning to open soon, which is why it's perfect timing that we have a new lovely intern, Catherine, joining us as on a new PR & Marketing internship. This involved me preparing for a handover of everything I have been doing for the past 6 months for someone else to be able to pick up where I left off. As I had been writing guides to a good amount of what I had been learning, it was really easy for Catherine to look through these and get an overall view and some tips on the tools and systems she will be using during her internship.
Cat and I have done a few tasks together which has been a good opportunity to get to know her and it's been fun working together. We went to the Southbank together one day to film some videos, and it was interesting how much more confident and passionate I was when speaking to the public than the first time I did the same task around 4 months ago.
We were also given the task to apply the temporary vinyls to the windows of the new shop to let everyone know that CCK2 is coming soon! Applying very thinly cut strips of plastic to a window is harder than it looks, luckily we had the lovely and helpful guys who are doing our permanent signage on hand to do the first one for us and show us how it's done. We managed to get the other ones up ourselves and within two minutes of them being up and visible I was approached by at least 3 people asking what was going on. The buzz had begun and it was quite exciting to see people look at the window curiously and smile as they walked past.
Also this month the branding was finally approved and we submitted our designs to print for our cups. It has been so exciting to see the logo, colours and icons of the brand develop over the past few months and our branding team has worked really hard. We finally have a beautiful cohesive brand to be proud of and can't wait to share it with everyone. I feel that the interaction during my PR and Marketing internship with the suppliers for packaging and printing, has given me some practice and preparation for the sort of conversations and interactions I will be having with other sorts of suppliers and traders for the Retail Internship I am starting.
As I'm coming to the end of this internship and getting ready to move on to working on a different aspect of the business for retail operations, I have began to realise how much I've learnt in the last few months. I reviewed a development plan that I had written at the beginning of the internship which outlined all of the skills I wanted to gain and experiences I would like to have during my time at CCK. Looking back over them I felt such an achievement and general sense of overall growth in confidence, I had done everything on that list and much more.