Even though the RAC office is no stranger in terms of atmosphere as I work there on a casual basis, my first day still gave me
the nerves; I was really excited.
Danielle and Chloe who both work for the Roadside Assistance
division greeted me at 8:30am at the Joondalup office. Danielle is a Product
and Marketing manager, and Chloe is a Marketing assistant. I sat on John’s
desk, the Executive Motoring and Marketing Manager who accepted my internship,
logged on and received files from Danielle. These files were to familiarize and
prepare myself for my first meeting. Danielle had me read two marketing plans;
One was the 2013 marketing plan, and the second was the final draft for 2014.
These were in the form of PowerPoint slides, and each consisted of approximately 140 pages. The
meeting only had myself, Danielle and Chloe. It went on for two hours, and it
gave me the insight on how Roadside Assistance was going in terms of performance,
and what plans the team had for the next financial year.
After the meeting, I was given my first project by Chloe. The
RAC 10 years ago had installed patrolman meeting point signs at shopping
centre, universities and hospitals to assist the process of finding where the
member is at these places. However, as the RAC had undergone a rebrand, and
because they no longer utilize the signs as they found it much more sufficient to
meet members at their cars. My job was to find both the email and telephone
details of these places. The folder consisted just over 100 shopping centres,
hospitals and universities with the signs locations. By the end of the day I
had all the information needed typed up on the excel spread sheet ready for me
to get in contact with. Chloe and I typed up an email explaining what we wished
for them to do and why. The places I was not able to get an email for were
going to be contacted via telephone at a later date. Funny enough, my first reply was from a
gentleman who was quite direct in terms of if they were going to remove the
signs it would be at our (RAC) expense. At this point, I knew this task was going
to be interesting. -Watch this space.
Upon my second day, I was still as nervous as the first day
as I was still getting my head around everything, however, the difference being
I was slightly more prepared as I had an insight of how the department
functions. My second project handed to me was by Anna, Marketing assistant for
Driving and Auto service centres. This project is called the ‘Competitors
analysis’ as it consisted of finding information about seven close competitors
to the RAC Auto service centre: Number of locations, services, complimentary
services and website notes to say the least. The second part of the project was
to get in contact with these competitors, three suburbs from each company, and
ask for quotes in regards to three vehicles - I found his quite fun. The quotes
are then put into an excel spread sheet, similar to ones used for previous
competitor analysis’s. The third step is to get an average price for each
company. This is the step I am currently on and I could already note that the
results are quite interesting. The final step for the competitor analysis is to
write out a report, this will highlight key attractions that maybe used by the
RAC.
In between these two ongoing projects, I was given small
tasks to do in case I wanted a break from them for a tad. These included:
Organising the storage room where flyers are kept, looking through pictures on
getty.com for the use of a free2go campaign and organising envelopes containing
Auto service Vouchers.
I then was invited to the Marketing teams monthly team
meeting, this was a tad daunting as I had only met a select number of the team
prior to it. The meeting was quite interesting, lasted two hours as it covered
several topics such as health and safety, issues they had, progress in projects
and a guest speaker from the branding team joined to introduce and explain the
new campaign they have implemented. We did a small activity where we were
handed a blank sheet of paper, had to close our eyes and get instructions. At the end of the instructions what we should have had was a paper
aeroplane, what I had was anything but that. We then had a competition on who
was able to throw theirs the furthest. This was really enjoyable as there were
laughs and I got a feel of everybody’s personality. At that point, I knew I was
going to enjoy my internship with them.
In a nut shell, these two days were full on, but surely
something I was looking forward to experiencing.
Nuha.
