My Princetern­ship was a one-day expe­ri­ence dur­ing Inter­ces­sion with Mr. Tom Mag­nus ‘77 at Wun­der­man, the world’s largest global mar­ket­ing ser­vices net­work, in New York City. Hav­ing no back­ground expe­ri­ence with ad agency func­tions at all; I walked into the build­ing at 8:45 am as a clue­less, excited lit­tle kid enter­ing a big new world.  The moment that I stepped off the ele­va­tor, Mr. Mag­nus was there to greet me with a huge smile and a warm wel­come.  He showed me his office and gave me a quick tour of Wun­der­man, which spans over about 5 floors, while intro­duc­ing me to a num­ber of his col­leagues on the way.

At 9 am, Mr. Mag­nus had a short meet­ing, which he allowed me to sit in on, and from this, I got a strong sense of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coor­di­na­tion that is vital between mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als.  After­wards, at 10 am, Mr. Mag­nus gave Rachel (my fel­low Princetern) and me an assign­ment to com­plete while he was away at a meet­ing with a client. He gave us a list of the names, titles, and floor loca­tions of sev­eral of his col­leagues in var­i­ous depart­ments at Wun­der­man and encour­aged us to speak with them to learn about the dif­fer­ent func­tions at an ad agency. This was the most excit­ing and edu­ca­tional part of the day for me.  We were basi­cally given com­plete free­dom to explore any part of Wun­der­man, and I poked my head into almost every person’s office or cubi­cle.  At first I felt a bit shy and intru­sive, but I quickly learned that the peo­ple at Wun­der­man are very friendly and will­ing to share their expe­ri­ences or offer advice.  I spoke with account man­agers, strate­gic plan­ners, project man­agers, cre­ative admins, art direc­tors, flash ani­ma­tors, and even a direc­tor at the Madi­son Group Graph­ics Cen­ter, which is essen­tially Wunderman’s stu­dio or pro­duc­tion hub.  Each per­son gave a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on their role within the ad agency and how their var­i­ous career paths led them to where they are now, but over­all, I got the feel­ing that work at an ad agency is very fast-paced and demand­ing.  Many of the work­ers that I talked to expressed that what excites them the most about their job is the fact that no day is the same for them – there is always some­thing new, and clients are con­stantly com­ing to them with new projects or prob­lems to be solved, so it never gets boring.

Besides under­stand­ing the actual work at an ad agency, as a visual artist, I was also espe­cially inter­ested in get­ting a feel for how a cre­ative envi­ron­ment is fos­tered within a pro­fes­sional set­ting.  I was very excited to observe that almost every wall and cor­ner around the Wun­der­man office was a tes­ta­ment to the cre­ative ener­gies of the peo­ple who work there.  The prod­ucts they designed are dis­played on every floor, vibrantly-colored walls greet you at every turn, giant chalk­boards and marker­boards lit­er­ally present a blank slate for the gen­er­a­tion of new ideas, cubi­cles are fully adorned with bright images and other inspi­ra­tional works of art, and there are even bean bag chairs and a ping-pong table.  Being able to explore Wun­der­man in per­son gave me a sense of what a cre­ative office envi­ron­ment is like – it’s a great bal­ance between for­mal and fun.

Tom Mag­nus and Felicia

At noon, Rachel and I recon­vened with Mr. Mag­nus in his office, and he gen­er­ously bought lunch for all of us. As we ate, we lis­tened in on a con­fer­ence call, and after­wards, we shared with him our morn­ing find­ings.  He also explained to us in more detail how the tech­no­log­i­cal advances in the dig­i­tal age are chang­ing the ways in which mar­ket­ing researchers and strate­gists are tar­get­ing their audi­ences today as well as how Wun­der­man works with its clients, par­tic­u­larly one of their old­est and largest ones – Citi.  We had the oppor­tu­nity to ask him any ques­tions that we had about the net­work or the adver­tis­ing field in gen­eral, and he allowed us to take a look at sev­eral pub­li­ca­tions on Wunderman’s global mar­ket­ing strate­gies as well as tips on how to land an adver­tis­ing job.

At 3 pm, Mr. Mag­nus set up a meet­ing for us with Toni Iacono, a Direc­tor in the Human Resources Depart­ment, who spoke to us about sum­mer intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties that Wun­der­man offers to col­lege stu­dents.  She answered any ques­tions we had and even gave us copies of text­books that are part of the intern­ship cur­ricu­lum.  The rest of the day con­sisted of more inter­nal meet­ings with Mr. Mag­nus, from which I con­sis­tently observed the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coop­er­a­tion in the pro­fes­sion – between indi­vid­u­als within the same depart­ment, between dif­fer­ent depart­ments at Wun­der­man, between Wun­der­man and its clients.  Every­one artic­u­lated their ideas and opin­ions very clearly, and it was obvi­ous that they worked on every project as a team.

His respon­si­bil­i­ties and meet­ings were many, but through­out the entire day, Mr. Mag­nus was very keen on allow­ing Rachel and I to gain as com­pre­hen­sive of an under­stand­ing as pos­si­ble of a day in the life of an ad agency worker and made sure that we got every­thing that we wanted to learn out of the expe­ri­ence.  Thanks to him and all of his incred­i­bly open and friendly col­leagues in every depart­ment, I walked out of Wun­der­man at 5 pm with a much bet­ter under­stand­ing of how an ad agency works, what it feels like to work in one, and even some new insight into mar­ket­ing strate­gies.  If any­one is inter­ested in learn­ing more about a career in the marketing/advertising field, I highly rec­om­mend this Princeternship.