Working on National Ad Campaigns, and Appearing in Them Too

Morgan Johnson worked on National Geographic’s advertising campaigns for the premiere of scripted movies and Big Cat Week.

Dean’s Intern Morgan Johnson at National Geographic.

During the fall semester of 2013 I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to intern with the Ad Sales Marketing and Partnerships department at National Geographic Channels.

During my time there, I immediately felt at home and accepted by my colleagues. National Geographic was a great place to intern because of their culture and the exciting work environment. While working at the channel, I was able to create a number of “Did You Know?” facts that appeared on-air, which were sponsored by advertising clients that my team worked with.

This semester was an exciting time to be at National Geographic. I was able to experience two very big events at the channel including the premiere of our scripted movie “Killing Kennedy” and Big Cat Week. Both events required a lot of work from our marketing and public relations teams, where I worked with my department to secure advertising clients and sponsorships for the premiers.

In addition to my day-to-day tasks, which included air-checks, DVD requests, and some administrative tasks, I also worked on a semester long project with my co-intern. Every semester the interns work on a trend report and choose a topic related to Ad Sales to research to present to the entire department at the end of the semester. For our trend report, my co-intern and I decided to research social media strategies of advertiser campaigns being implemented by some of our competitive networks. While researching, I learned a lot about creating integrated campaigns that benefit not only the audience, but also advertisers. It is a job that is definitely harder than it looks. At the beginning of the semester I thought presenting to the entire team would be intimidating, but by the end of the semester my advisers and even the top executives working within the Ad Sales department were people I had developed great relationships with throughout the semester. When it came time to present our trend report, I didn’t feel like an intern, I felt like part of the team and that my work and opinion really mattered.

Those relationships and the environment at National Geographic made my experience there special, and it is the main reason why I chose to intern there again for Spring 2014. Plus, the perks of appearing in an on-air promo spot for the channel didn’t hurt either.