Intern Diary: Grace
I was initially nervous going into my internship at JMG. This was my first internship during my college experience and the most daunting aspect was the fully-remote setting. I prepped for the internship and tried to focus on making the most of the internship which would satisfy all my required intern credits at Hofstra. I wanted to ensure that I made lasting connections and had a true impact on the company despite the online setting. As I gear up for the final week of my internship, it’s safe to say I found success on both these fronts.
Team bonding was always at the forefront of this internship experience. We had three required meetings each internship day: Morning Meeting with Executive, Sip the Tea, and the End of Day call. This was the absolute perfect amount of meetings to effectively coordinate with our internship advisors, without overwhelming interns with tedious Zoom calls. Alyssa (my advisor) always efficiently delivered my tasks during our morning meeting, but we always shared tidbits about our lives/weekends. I genuinely feel a personal connection with Alyssa that goes beyond JMG and my internship assignments. Sip the Tea, our afternoon meeting where we discuss pop culture, celebrity gossip, etc., further emphasized JMG’s placed importance on team bonding. This was a summer full of breaking news and celebrity tabloids, so it was great to have dedicated time to break away from work and discuss the news of the day with my fellow interns and the rest of the JMG team.
I focused on four clients throughout my internship: East Village Pizza, an authentic yet innovative pizzeria located in Manhattan, Quinn Residences, a real estate development company focused on build-to-rent neighborhoods, Xtract One, an AI-powered weapon detection security system company, and Caelux, a company focused on developing perovskite solar panels. I’ve been looking forward to an agency-style internship since my first day of PR classes freshman year, so being able to juggle these clients, across so many different industries, was super enjoyable and I learned a lot from my internal research and assignments.
The internship was not focused on client campaign development, most of the pitch angles were developed by the executives; however, my assignments took me through the entire cycle of pitching and media coverage. One of the first steps in this cycle is media list building, researching journalists, and finding out who would be a good match to pitch to. JMG utilizes Muck Rack for media list building. The site was super easy to navigate and made researching journalists and media outlets so accessible. I will use Muck Rack as a resource for the rest of my career, so I can’t thank JMG enough for introducing it to me. I did help in developing initial pitches, as well as follow-up pitches. JMG has specific verbiage they use in pitches, so I was tasked with adapting notes from Alyssa into ready-to-pitch pieces. I learned more about different types of pitch angles in writing these pieces. My first idea of a pitch is a new product, event, or collaboration from within a company, and we did have these types of pitches: specifically, Xtract One had their security systems installed with the Florida Panthers and Community Health Network. Our other clients didn’t have as many internal announcements, so we focused on pitching expert voice pieces. We would find a topic that aligned with our client spokesperson (typically the owner of CEO) and their ventures, and then pitched why they would be a good inclusion in a piece and their talking points. I think it's super important to develop diverse types of pitches for clients because news is adapting so fast, and having knowledge of different approaches I can take will help me when I’m in a position developing pitch ideas. My other assignments were briefing memos to prep a client for broadcast coverage (in an interview or podcast format) and press clippings/feature summaries for post-coverage assessment.
Overall, my time at JMG was nothing short of a wonderful first internship experience. The internal team was very friendly and helpful, and I made so many connections beyond just Alyssa. Because of Sip the Tea, I was able to meet so many great women at JMG that I wouldn’t have otherwise met due to the remote setting of the internship. JMG has such a diverse set of clients spanning across industries, I enjoyed getting to know my clients and the respective work they were contributing to their fields. As a future PR professional, agency work will probably be in my future and I will look to my experience will JMG to guide me. The workload was never overwhelming, I was able to get through all my assigned tasks each day, even having extra time to tackle other assignments. I will take the skills I learned in media list researching, adapting ideas into pitches, and internal client research with me for the rest of my career.
My Desk Set-Up (featuring my JMG notebook and a Thank You note from Jenna)
I completed the majority of my internship at this desk! The remote setting of the internship was certainly not without its benefits: I’m from Massachusetts originally and was able to visit my family while still completing my internship.
