By Darby Steininger
Darby Steininger is a University of Miami junior majoring in Media Management with a minor in Broadcast Journalism. She agreed to share her experience as a summer intern in 2023.
From June 6 to July 16, I worked as a paid intern in the global marketing department of Peter Thomas Roth, a skincare company located in New York City. The work schedule was hybrid, with two to three days in the office and two to three days online.
The head of global marketing supervised four other interns and we were each assigned a different set of tasks. Every day, the other interns and I made videos for products and even walked on the streets of midtown Manhattan to find willing pedestrians to interview for skits. During these interviews, we asked people questions related to skincare so that they could win merchandise while we filmed the whole process. This experience was a first for me and allowed me to improve my people skills while getting more comfortable speaking to strangers.
Every few days or so, I worked on a new project that involved researching competing brands. For every new product launched by Peter Thomas Roth, I made a presentation to a team of leaders of the top competing brands and their main assets. In doing so, I learned how important it is to not only know the audience of a product, but also its competition.
In addition to researching competing brands and their online presence, in-store presence was just as important. After compiling other companies’ online assets, I physically went to different makeup and skincare stores all around Manhattan to take photos of how each brand presented its products on the shelves. I had to take notes of how stores organized the products, including which ones were placed in the front shelves and which ones were placed on the top or bottom shelves. Placement and layout are key marketing attributes.
One of my other roles as an intern was to take meeting notes for my boss. Learning how to take professional notes and adjusting to how she would like to read them is something that I never had to learn to do before and became a valuable skill.
All the interns were also involved in working with the creative team. Helping with photos or brainstorming ideas for product launch parties was another interesting aspect of the internship. Throwing out ideas all together and then seeing which ones would materialize was an exciting process.
This internship was my first real experience with this sort of professional environment, and it gave me skills that I will carry throughout the rest of my career. I enjoyed the teamwork and working with all types of people and personalities. Learning how to write emails in a formal manner and working with people much older and wiser than I am taught me an immense amount of office skills. Being able to bring my knowledge of social media, which Peter Thomas Roth valued, was a fulfilling experience.
