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My Internship Experience At WMG: Oriana Branchflower

Oriana Branchflower Internship Experience

My name is Oriana Branchflower and I have been interning at WMG since January 2021. I am currently doing a Master’s Degree in Digital Marketing & Management Innovation in a French school named Sup de Pub.

Originally based in France, my school now has a campus in London which I was lucky enough to join for my master’s degree. I have been studying communication and advertising for four years and decided to specialise in digital marketing to learn more about SEO. To validate my master’s degree, I had to do a six-month internship related to digital marketing and decided to look for a UK based company.

Recruitment process

Fortunately, I had a family friend who lives in England. She posted about me looking for an internship on LinkedIn and through her connections, I was able to connect with Cheryl Crossley, PR Associate Director at WMG.

Cheryl emailed me to say that she could offer me an internship at WMG. We met over video call (everyone was still working from home at this point) to discuss the internship and how the different teams worked across the company.

Cheryl was really kind to give me this opportunity even though I didn’t have any previous experience in digital marketing. During our meeting she asked me which team would be interesting for me to discover so I asked if I could gain experience in the outreach team, the digital PR team and the content team. The process was very quick, and I was able to start as soon as my classes finished in January.

Starting the internship

Outreach

On the first day, I received my laptop and met with Vickie Bailey and Iolanda Bastos. Vickie is the head of outreach while Iolanda is a senior digital marketing executive and the lead of the outreach team I was joining.

I received a very nice welcome on the team chat and all the colleagues I met were kind and patient with me while I was learning. I had lots of training in the first week and got to meet most of the outreach team. This was a really good experience to go through as I was working from home and unable to meet anyone in person.

Once training had commenced, I was hands on straight away which I really enjoyed and the communication in the team was very easy if I had any questions or problems.

Digital PR

After two months in the outreach team, I joined the digital PR team. On my first day with the new team, I got to meet everyone as they all took part in my training. It was very reassuring to meet the team one by one and everyone was very welcoming.

During my time with them, the team ensured I experienced all parts of digital PR, from the creative brainstorms to research to promotion and also some client meetings. I enjoyed the creative part in digital PR as it was a challenge for me to think of new PR story ideas for varied clients.

The team has a nice way of brainstorming which involves everyone explaining their ideas while the rest of the team listens. The online Teams is also really fun to be in when we discuss everything from news or PR stories to debate on whether crisps have their place in a sandwich (which is a big no from me).

Technical SEO

At first, I wanted to join the content team for my last two months at WMG. However, during my internship, I realised that writing and content creation wasn’t the best idea for me. Instead, I wanted to join the technical SEO team instead. After a discussion with Cheryl, we decided to split my time between digital PR and technical SEO for my last two months.

In the technical SEO team, I got to learn about keyword analysis, title tags and also uploading content on client websites. These tasks were not easy, but I enjoyed the challenge. Lauren Pyke, digital operations manager, was really helpful and took the time to train me and help me when I had a problem.

My favourite part of the experience

My favourite moment during my internship would have to be while I was with the digital PR team and got my first national coverage in The Sun for a client.

There’s nothing as rewarding as getting coverage after days of promotions and pitching the idea to journalists. The team was so happy for me and said that when you work in digital PR, you never forget your first national coverage!

Final thoughts

I really loved my time at WMG and will be very sad to leave all the lovely people I have met during these last six months. If you’re given the opportunity, I would definitely recommend joining WMG for an internship as you get to learn a lot about all the different teams. I also felt a lot of trust from my colleagues as they let me work for big clients and gave me tasks that were challenging. Everyone was very patient and understanding of the fact that I was here to learn too.

I also got to meet and interview Ian Lloyd, joint managing director of WMG, about the evolution of Digital Marketing for my end of year school paper. I really appreciated the fact that he took some time to answer all my questions even though we had never spoken before.

WMG is a really fun place to join with plenty of meetings organised to bond as colleagues over something else than work. I had the pleasure to join social events for birthdays, Thirsty Thursdays, games of Scribble and team awards too!


Want to find out more about life at WMG? Take a look online or browse our current vacancies to see if there’s a spot for you!