By: Paul Schwarz, DePaul University Marketing Student August 2017 Graduate

What is Rent Like A Champion?
Three Notre Dame college students listed a vacant apartment on Craigslist and eBay, promoting it as a weekend rental for a football game. Dedicated fans quickly rented the space, grateful to stay somewhere more affordable, and closer, to the stadium.

The immediate success Derrick, Drew, and Jordan experienced evolved into a big game event renting platform, Rent Like A Champion. The company now offer home rentals in over twenty college towns nationwide. Rent Like A Champion is stationed out of Catapult Chicago, the well-known incubator for startup companies whose sales promise to scale quickly.

Rent Like A Champion was featured on the popular television show, Shark Tank, inevitably soaring recognition and sales for the young company after signing a contract with “Sharks,” Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca. The startup team, however, remains small with only seven members: Mike (CEO), Denise, Betty, Hank, Claire, Dave, and Tim.

Day One: Rent Like A Champion

Gratefully, I was given the opportunity to intern for Rent Like A Champion. A phone
interview was followed by an in-person meeting with the CEO, Mike Doyle. I was anxious to learn I was the new intern for this becoming company. I’ve always felt a passion in entrepreneurship, so I was eager to observe the processes involved in a newer company. However, I have had several other internships prior to this experience, all of which were for large, corporate organizations.

The small, intimate environment, however, created a smooth and comfortable transition into this less familiar atmosphere. The team gave me a company branded t-shirt, coffee mug, and office supplies. After a brief introduction, Mike organized for me to individually meet with each member of the team to better understand their personal role as well as their background before working at Rent Like A Champion.

My experiences working for companies with thousands of employees made it impossible to know everyone. This smaller environment allowed me to personally engage with every member

of the team so that not only was I learning and gaining skills within my own role but I was learning of all the tasks required to operate the company as a whole. Ultimately, this unique company culture created a personable, intimate environment to work in and it highlighted the value of everyone involved in creating a single company.

Daily Tasks

My role at Rent Like A Champion was Business Development. This required me to call on past renters to drive demand during top sport events at the biggest marketed universities, maximize a city’s potential by finding prospective partners within youth sports and other events, and to maintain exceptional customer experience for current consumers.

Unlike interning for a corporation where your title determines your role within the company, startups aren’t limited by labels. To keep strong against competitors, new companies require constant creativity and innovation, skills encouraged by everyone belonging to the company. This unique aspect of younger companies allows you to expand beyond any single role.

Personal Reflection

My experiences prior to interning for Rent Like A Champion at large, corporate companies offered me insight into two different business cultures. There are distinct pros and cons between each setting and, ultimately, understanding your personality as well as your personal and professional goals can help determine where you will find the greatest success.

I recommend to anyone who values interpersonal skills and the ability to learn the processes of the beginning of a company to intern for a startup. I recommend to anyone who dreams of owning their own business one day to intern for a startup. I recommend to anyone who enjoys working within the corporate world but wants to experience a laid-back, welcoming environment to intern for a startup. My experience at Rent Like A Champion is invaluable and I am grateful for the opportunity to work alongside men and women who valued the unique skills I could offer the team and encouraged me to think critically, creatively, and innovatively. I left the internship confirming my true passion: to start up my own company.

This summer I have had a wonderful opportunity and experience to be able to work within the Chicago Fire Soccer Club organization as a marketing and events intern. Specifically, I spend most of my time focuses on a specific department within the organization, the club ran recreational soccer league. This department is not only one of the mo st successful areas of the clubs business, but it also is the department that interacts the most with the organizations target market. The interaction on a daily basis outside a conventional has been a great learning experience and has given me insight on numerous strategies for the sports industry. As usual for a professional team, the Fire organization is large which can sometimes be overwhelming and prove to be a challenging place to learn as just a small fish in a large pond. However, working closely on a team of about ten people within a specific department has been extremely beneficial.

In realm of an events intern, day-to-day activities for this internship have remained fairly constant with exception of specific events such as Team USA game watches, tournaments, Fire matches, and other events. The main aspect of this area of the internship is to be at the events and make sure everything runs smoothly giving the fans and recreational players the best experience as possible. However, as a marketing intern my duties and projects fluctuate on a daily basis. Once a week the team sits down to go over the game plan for the day and week, communicate issues and opportunities, and to also brainstorm innovative ideas that would benefit not only the recreational soccer department, but also the organization as a whole. Recently I have brought many ideas to the table regarding the issues I set forth in my marketing plan. My hope is that these ideas and the plan that brought to the table will translate to a greater connection with the team and our specific department of recreational soccer. Additionally, there are some days and nights that I work intensively with the digital and social media specialist. Digital and social media is continuing to grow as a dominant marketing strategy which will prove to be crucial in my overall experience of learning the in’s and out’s of marketing. This aspect of the internship has also allowed me to be extremely creative and innovative which will become a key asset of mine in the future due to this experience. Furthermore, as in all areas of business, including marketing, there is definitely a sales aspect to the internship. Throughout the events and recreational league matches I am charged with the duty to collect payments from teams. Having to promote and sell has definitely gone a long way in developing me not only as a sales person, but also as a speaker to complete strangers, which has shifted from a personal weakness to strength due to this internship.

Overall, I believe this has been a great experience because I have been exposed to many areas of working with a professional sports team rather than just solely marketing. At first there was definitely more of a focus of the events portion of the internship but being proactive I reached out to my supervisor and sought more responsibilities within the marketing space. This led me to being much more involved with social and digital media which I believe has been the most beneficial aspect of the internship because it has allowed me to analyze consumer trends, and implement creative ideas based on my findings. In the end this internship will help me in the future because it has given me a diverse and broad learning experience.

This summer I have been an intern for 3M. In this internship I am a sales representative, and work out of Austin, Texas. I am stationed within the Communications Market Division and the team I work for deals closely with AT&T. However, my internship didn’t start in Austin and I’ll explain that now. In the middle of May me and 34 other interns headed to 3M headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota for our internship orientation. Here we first gained access to the 3M system, and got settled in with new emails, computers, and phones. During our time in headquarters were taught the 3M sales model and got a greater understanding of 3M as a whole. However, that is a big task to do. 3M is a company composed of over 88,000 thousand employees globally and sells and manufactures over 55,000 products. Each and every intern had a different job and was assigned to different locations around the country. Before we left for our assignments however we did get to see some amazing this happening at 3M headquarters. For example, we got to tour the 3M Innovation center and you can see a picture of a few fellow interns and myself below.

During my time in Austin I have had a few different responsibilities. My largest comes from performing product trainings for our fiber products to AT&T tech garages. I have spent a few weeks in Houston and even spent time in Madison and Milwaukee WI. Below is a picture of a co-worker of mine conducting product training while I shadowed him in, Houston.

On top of these product training’s I have spent a lot of time in the office doing some account analysis and finding key opportunities to sell and push several of our product lines. By bridging the gaps between product sales I have been able to identify tech garages nationally that should be a point of interest for our division. Lastly, I have spent a lot of time on salesforce.com and have helped conduct a salesforce.com ‘playbook’ for our AT&T team. A struggle that existed was confusion with a new CRM system, and hopefully through several meetings that I have lead I have made salesforce.com more simplified and easy to use.

This internship has taught me many things about both the job and myself. The most important thing that I have learned this summer is that it is okay to take on challenges that do not directly relate to your skill set. By getting familiar with excel and doing some account analysis I have been able to strengthen my skillset and have added value to the division in which I was placed. In terms of the job, I have learned that organization is so important for any field sales position, and by being organized with planning sales calls and visits you can truly be the most effective. I have loved my experience and have truly learned more than I thought was imaginable. My time in Austin has been wonderful, and I am glad I could intern for such a well respected and highly performing company.

As the Digital Marketing Coordinator for Worldly Strategies, not one day is ever repetitive or mundane. Worldly Strategies, a digital marketing agency started by a DePaul alum,

serves both small and medium sized businesses by utilizing the exponentially powerful realm of online marketing. The agency currently has over fifteen clients, while only having two employees–Becca Berkenstadt (the founder) and myself.

Becca and I meet weekly to discuss current projects and learn new techniques. The remainder of my work is done at home. Each meeting flies by as both of us are fully engaged in the tasks at hand and eager to learn new things. Some of the knowledge Becca has passed on to me includes: web design, search engine optimization, creating content calendars for social media, and setting up online ads. After some detailed note taking and much question asking, I add a new skill to my toolbox! I take this knowledge with me and carry out more client projects from home.

Something that continuously keeps me on my toes is the diversity of industries that our clients reside in. One moment I am crafting an Instagram post for Doug Bruno Girls Basketball Camp, and the next I am creating a business card for M. Martin & Co. Jewelers. This need to make a quick switch keeps me both engaged and always entertained.

“After some detailed note taking and much question asking, I add a new skill to my toolbox!”

Being a Digital Marketing Coordinator also means having various Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. With so many accounts, I forget I have a personal one of my own! Using social media is important to our clients because more likes and follows lead to more interactions and ultimately increased transactions for their businesses. Managing social media is like an art and science. I test out new filters and types of posts then see how the followers react.

An unforgettable experience has been launching another one of Becca’s companies, Chicago Visitors Guide: an online magazine giving tourists and locals the inside scoop on all things Chicago. We hosted a launch party at Catalyst Ranch complete with raffle prizes, a storytelling video, and a delicious cake from Sweet Mandy B’s. We also handle all the marketing and article writing for Chicago Visitors Guide alongside a few other writers.

Over the past eight months at my internship, I have acquired so much knowledge and have been able to gain experience in the fast-paced real world of marketing. At Worldly Strategies, while some processes are the same, I never know what could be next–and I love that!

Caitlin was an intern with Mayer Alloys during the Fall 2017 MKT 393 class and continued her internship through the school year. 

What is it like to be a marketing intern at a metals company? Well from an intern at Mayer Alloys it can be quite different then working for some of your other marketing internships. Mayer Alloys is a Detroit based solder distributer who focuses on businesses to business solder sales, electronic recycling and metal scraping. Therefore I have to focus on business rather than individuals and the content that I put together is targeted towards other business. Mayer Alloys is a small business, we have about 10 employees but they do move a lot of business and outsource a lot of their distribution and marketing.

Some of my daily tasks include running the social media pages like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I also write blogs posts discussing the solder and recycling industry in order to help drive traffic to our website and therefore help to create leads and educate our customers on any solder or recycling questions they might have. I help manage their contacts and deals through their CRM system; Hubspot. I do also sit in on meeting where we discuss a marketing planning, including SEO and how to enhance their website, like adding pillar pages and CTA’s. Here is an example of a CTA ad that I made and a blog post:

Since Mayer Alloys is a small business I am having a very hands on role within the company. Because Mayer Alloys is small my role switches a lot from day to day depending on what needs to be done for the company. Although it is a lot of work I am learning so much and I believe I wouldn’t learn this much about marketing if I were at a large corporation. I can see the effect of everything I do and everything I post so it can be very rewarding. The metals industry is a very niche industry so there are always challenges trying to tap that market and figuring out what marketing techniques will reach our target audience.

Overall, being a marketing intern at a metals company is interesting and very hands on but a very rewarding experience. I have learned so much and I am more prepared for a job in the marketing world after I graduate!

Diving into the professional work environment, you must start somewhere. Although I’ve had previous exposure to the marketing industry working for another company independently, I’ve never worked in a professional office setting on a team, as a Sales and Marketing Analyst Intern.  The company I’m interning for is called Consolidated Concepts. It is part of a family of companies, under the name “Emerging,” that elevate restaurant and entertainment concepts to be among the top in the industry. Although I help all four companies under Emerging, I spend most of my time working for Consolidated Concepts, which optimizes supply chain for restaurants across the nation. The company employs around 100 people altogether but the office in Chicago, being very small, has only 20.

A lot of my time involves researching new restaurant chains in which our supply chain optimization can be implemented. While searching for leads, I can be creative. Aside from looking in our data bases, there are numerous news sites or blogs that mention chains that align with our lead qualification criteria. We also discovered that we can get leads through alert messages which warns us of restaurant chains that are emerging, growing, merging, etc. Utilizing these alerts, has allowed us to place the ones that meet our criteria into a trigger-event campaign. This essentially means placing the customer into a specific email workflow, depending on whether they are a client or potential client. We use Marketo as the marketing automation software which helps send these email-triggered-events and it creates the workflows to engage customers and prospects. The process is efficient because it reaches over 200 leads every couple of weeks with one click of a button, while rest of the process is automated until a lead becomes qualified. Then, it’s up to the Sales Representative to take that qualified lead.

I’m working on another major project directly with the President of Emerging. We are putting together a blog that educates and inspires restaurant operators and C-Level Executives in areas such as real estate, data intelligence, cost reduction, and beverage education. The goal of this blog is not only to become the leader in educating emerging restaurants, but to gain more leads and obviously boost business. Along with writing white papers for the blog and interviewing c-level executives, I am learning about the marketing automation process for blogs as well. We are using HubSpot as our blogging platform. HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close business. I can’t wait to see what new business our blog brings in.

How big is your company?
Former NCAA and Olympians athletes, Jilyne Higgins and Libby Ludlow founded ZGiRLS. Since 2012, dozens of interns, five board members, and two-full times employees have joined our company. In spite of our small team size, our impact on the world is immeasurable!

What’s your title?
I’m an Ambassador Community Captain. It’s a brand new marketing
role that I created alongside the leadership team. My focus is
activating and engaging our Ambassador team of Olympic and
professional athletes. Each individual represents and supports the
organization in unique way. Collectively, they are core to moving the
ball forward for the next generation of girls.

Can you share more about your day-to-day activities?
Building a nationwide community of all-star athletes takes a mix of
consistent and valuable digital and personal touches. On a daily
basis, I interact with potential and current ZGiRLS ambassadors on our social media channels (@gozgirls) with likes and comments . It is an easy way to casually start conversations as well as make our team members feel special. Beyond social media, I use texting and emailing to ask our ambassadors to
complete activities such as taking over our Instagram story or
participating in a webinar, as they all have committed to a monthly
investment of five to 60 minutes of engagement with our ZGiRLS
network. Once a week the founder and I work one-on-one to develop
strategy, initiatives and evaluate my execution; in the meetings, she
empowers me continue to creative ways of bringing people together.

Can you reflect on your internship? What are you learning?
There was a huge learning curve, because we created the role
together from scratch and started the ambassador program with a
blank slate. It has been rewarding to have autonomy to shape the
future of our ambassador community. First I was tasked with designing
and iterating a scalable process to recruit, activate and engage
athletes. Within five months, I grew the team from 20 inactive
ambassadors to over 30 engaged members of the team, which has
contributed to girls signing up for our Summer Adventure Camp. Being
deeply involved in the movement has led me to realize the power of
mobilizing women and girls make a positive change.

Trust me, it’s not as complicated as it sounds. My role falls under the Local Media department, whose basic function is to negotiate TV and Radio airtime for our clients’ commercials. Some of RPA’s clients include Honda, Acura, La-Z-Boy, Dole Fruit, and apartments.com.

In my position, I assist the Local Media Negotiators with the execution and maintenance of media schedules. After a schedule is negotiated and ordered with a station, the best-case scenario is that everything runs exactly as it was ordered. However, there are reasons the TV or radio station sometimes cannot air the spot. A few examples of why this would happen are scheduling changes, breaking news, a rain-out or overtime during a sporting event, a new special being added to the schedule, a program getting cancelled, or even the station overselling the time slot. The station will come back with their best “makegood”.  A “makegood” is an offer where the station will make the spot purchased (that is unable to air as ordered) good in another program and/or time-slot with equal or better ratings. One responsibility of my job is to negotiate and reject or approve makegoods. For example, the Local Media Negotiator purchases a 30-second spot in the Big Bang Theory to air in May. As May approaches, the TV station changes their schedule and sees that The Big Bang Theory may not be airing that week. The station would send a makegood for Modern Family. In this situation, I would pull Nielsen demographic ratings and consider the client’s marketing objectives to make sure that Modern Family targets the same or a better audience than The Big Bang Theory. If it does, the makegood will be accepted. If it does not, the station will send me a new makegood for evaluation.

Another aspect of my role is processing the media billing. After the schedules run, RPA needs to pay the TV and radio stations.  One of my responsibilities is to make sure everything ran correctly and within client guidelines before payments are processed.  Sometimes the stations will remove spots or makegood spots without approval. In those cases, I communicate with the stations to find out what happened and if it can still be approved for payment. These are some of my major tasks; however, I have other tasks as assigned as well.

Before starting at RPA, I didn’t know a lot about how the advertising world operates aside from what I learned watching Mad Men. My role has allowed me to learn a lot about how the industry works and get hands on experience doing work that keeps the agency successfully operating, rather than busy work or intern projects that never see the light of day. The culture is laid-back and everyone is very approachable with any questions. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time at RPA and I’m proud of the work that the agency makes for our clients. It’s pretty cool knowing that your agency was responsible every time you see a Honda ad!

I encourage other Marketing majors to branch out from current notions of marketing roles and to try something new – I’m definitely glad I did!