FORM Public Relations Intern Kayla Prior is a recent graduate of Elon University, where she majored in strategic communications and ran varsity track. A Boston native, Kayla loves Southern barbeque, beaches and Cheerwine.

Six complete strangers are thrown together and asked to cook up a comprehensive, integrated marketing campaign from scratch in less than six weeks’ time. Sounds like a reality show on Bravo, right? Well it’s actually been our summer.

Wray Ward’s FORM internship program includes a big group project: developing a marketing campaign that targets millennials. We received no cookbook, instructions or ingredients. All each of us got was five teammates and an end goal with a ticking timer.

Easy, right?

Getting Started

At the start of the summer, we said we weren’t afraid to fail. Good thing, because in our first try, we failed spectacularly. It was almost like we’d tried baking a cake without flour, eggs or sugar. When we approached our first check-in meeting with our supervisors, we thought we had everything set. But, we’d skipped several steps. We had many ideas but no clear-cut objectives. In fact, we needed several meetings with our creative directors and more than a little constructive criticism to rein everything in. It was clear we had work to do.

Combining Forces

You can’t bake a great cake if you’re missing key ingredients, and while we might have overlooked a few key steps in the beginning, the good news is that each of us brought something unique to the table. We built off and learned from each other’s backgrounds and talents. Our designer learned about HTML and CSS, and our copywriter fell in love with video. And while we all learned a lot on our own, teamwork won the day. Copywriting and graphics came together to lead branding. Public relations and digital built a social media campaign from the ground up. Motion put our stories onscreen. Account leadership kept us all together, moving toward a common goal.

Digging In

When we dug in, we realized how integral research is to the marketing process. We immersed ourselves in our target audience, but from the perspective of marketers, not peers. We researched millennial statistics that related to our client’s goals in order to gain perspective on how to best reach our target.

A majority of our tactics focused on digital marketing and social media. We built smooth, clean website platforms that revolved around branding we conceived. We created an entire social media campaign using Snapchat, an application that has been steadily increasing its advertising power over the past 12 months. We even delved into public art and saw, firsthand, its power to spread messages across the globe through sites like Instagram and Facebook. We sketched out video concepts made for social sharing. We can’t share details, but let’s just say cute dogs were involved. The internet loves a cute dog.

Looking Back 

In the coming days, we’ll present our work to Wray Ward President and Chief Creative Officer Jennifer Appleby and other agency leaders, giving us a chance to really show our stuff as well as hone our presentation skills.

We really enjoyed having the opportunity to work on a project as a team. We exercised skills we’ll be able to transfer to our careers. We didn’t receive handholding or coddling; we learned on the job. We learned how to pick the best ingredients to create the best final product. We learned that the little details – the frosting on the cake – can make or break a project. We had fun and came up with some amazing ideas that we hope will have a positive impact on our client. While we’re all different in every way, from our personalities to our skill sets, we created strong work and accomplished goals together.  

And that’s how six complete strangers came together to create something awesome. Complete with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. 

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