I chose to work at True Media Services as an intern the summer between my junior year and senior year of college for a number of reasons. One, because True Media's internship program offered the opportunity to work in and experience the different departments of a noncreative media agency. Two, because I wanted to gain real experience in the industry that I was majoring in.

True media is a noncreative ad agency that focuses on the media buying, planning, research, and data analytics side of marketing. It's a running joke that the people who work at noncreative ad agencies are the nerds of the industry. HA! I agree! (its a good thing to be a nerd though, right?)

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While at True Media I had the opportunity to perform 4 main responsibilities.

• I aided in the media buying process for True Media clients to obtain traditional media space in traditional media outlets. These outlets included two of the major print outlets: newspapers and magazines. I utilized my phone skills to call and develop relationships with print media outlets across the state of Wisconsin to obtain pricing quotes and space availability. I documented this information in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and delivered it to my manager who then gave the go ahead to carry out the buying process and obtain the right amount of ad space needed at each print agency.

• My biggest responsibility at True Media was in their internal marketing department. I performed social media analysis on 8 of True Media's competitors to identify trends, spot opportunities for True Media, and suggest actionable plans to improve performance and increase their social media presence. True Media does not offer social media analysis to clients and therefore did not spend their resources on social media tracking tools. So, I had to go through social media accounts post by post to obtain the data needed such as likes, comments, shares, reach, volume, and influence. This was a very time consuming process to do for 8 organizations on 5 different social media platforms. That's 40 different social media accounts. To streamline this process I downloaded a free social media tracking tool to make my job more efficient and effective. The software system that I downloaded was Cyfe. In a short period of time I was able to learn how to use this software program and implement it effectively. This made my job more efficient and therefore more effective and helpful to the internal marketing team.

• I was tasked with the responsibility to perform market research for one of True Media's biggest health care clients. I was given the target market of the audience that this health care organization wanted to attract. I then researched various opportunities in the Dallas, TX area at which this health care organization might advertise. I researched the areas and the demographics of the areas to identify where the health care provider should focus their efforts to maximize the effectiveness of their advertising. I compiled a list of opportunities and places that, based off the demographics, would be most advantages for the client to advertise at and delivered it to the project manager. The project manager was able to use that list to focus the buying and advertisement coordination process.

• In order to help perform smaller tasks on a lot of different projects around the office I needed to learn how to use the RADaR software program that True Media implements for data measurement and analysis. I had to learn this software program in a short amount of time to be more effective in the help that I gave. I used this software program to analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), spending on sales, and look at campaign performance in real-time.