Its been a great start here at Aberdeen Inspired! After the first week of working remotely, I was finally able to get into the office located perfectly in the centre of Aberdeen. It's great being able to walk to work, although I seem to have a new habit of starting my day with a coffee and a bacon sandwich, a 5 Guys for lunch, and something from M&S on my way home. My declining bank account and expanding waistline are not too pleased but its worth it for how much I am loving my time here so far.
I was really worried the office environment wouldn’t be for me. Many of my school friends said I was making a mistake by studying digital marketing which would most likely end up as an office job. I think they imagined me becoming a teacher or a nurse or basically anything where I was able to run around and blabber to my heart’s content. However, this office is quite a bit different than the corporate office which you see on TV. The people are all extremely friendly (and chatty), there is a variety of genuinely interesting projects and meetings to sit in, and there is an opportunity to get out of the office quite often. For example, last week a group of us made the lengthy trek to the art gallery (about three minutes away) to listen to Joseph Long play the piano and promote the art galleries new Thursday lunch time music sessions. We were definitely the youngest there by about 30 years, but I liked it all the same.
I also think I might have grown out of the need to move around all the time. I am quite an active person, but after working a bunch of jobs which required me to be on my feet for 8 hours of the day, being able to sit down is lush. Each day whizzes by because I’m enjoying myself, I’m able to get my head down and I know exactly what is expected of me.
Over these past 3 weeks Zoe and I have been tasked with the project of analysing the data from the Aberdeen Gift card in order to send each company their breakdown on how much money they have made, and how this compares to other companies within their sector. The gift card can be used in over 150 shops within the city centre, so this was quite a task. I have been working mostly with the excel data, and trying my best to create easy to read charts and graphs which can be sent to the companies. The toughest part of this project is making sure the data is personalised enough to be interesting, but does not include any confidential information from the other companies. It’s satisfying knowing that most of our work only has to be done once, and this can be used for years in AI's future.
Other than that, we have also attended meetings about restaurant week which is set to take place from March 7th -18th . Zoe and I helped professional photographer Conor Gault take photos to be used for the promotion of restaurant week. I was mostly just holding forks and drinks in strange positions for him to take photos of, but it was actually a lot of fun, and there's a possibility my hands will be featured on billboards around Aberdeen. Exciting claim to fame!
The team have asked if Zoe and I to create TikToks which I knew would happen because its such a classic “digital marketing intern” thing to do. Zoe has already made a nice behind the scenes reel of the photoshoot which is due to come out on the Instagram today.
I'll keep this page updated with what I’m up to, lot’s of things to look forward to soon.
Thanks
Caitlin