Ad Sales Marketing & Parnerships: Learning the Ropes

Jasmine on the National Geographic channels floor entrance.

By Dean’s Intern Jasmine Day at National Geographic

The past few months with National Geographic Channel have taught me a lot about learning, observing, and curiosity. I have always been a firm believer that formal education teaches a person facts and concepts. However, throughout the years I have come to embrace the idea that experience, through internships and through life, are the very things that teach a person process.

I am still so excited to be a part of a network that produces such engaging and meaningful content. And I am equally excited to be working alongside some of the most talented people in media and learning about the workings of the industry through a marketing and advertising lens; something that I have never done before.

As an intern with the Ad Sales Marketing and Partnerships team, I have had the opportunity to sit in on interesting meetings and conference calls with some of the coolest clients out there–I never realized how much thought and planning goes into making sure a commercial airs correctly and is a good fit for the network and the client.

As a Public Relations major with a strong interest and minor in marketing, I never realized until now, just how similar the two fields actually are. Throughout my time with NatGeo I have sat in on several brainstorm meetings where the team thinks of interesting and creative ways to create a story, per se, for a commercial that we might pitch to a potential client who holds an interest in advertising with the network. This process, in my mind, is synonymous with the process in which a Public Relations professional pitches a story to a journalist–shaping a unique story to create the perfect fit for each publication or other media outlet.

What I have come to love the most about interning with the Ad Sales Marketing and Partnerships team is that there truly is no single day that is exactly like another. With projects ranging from social media and advertising trend analysis and researching and developing “Did You Know…” facts for client advertisement spots, all the way to sitting in on voice overs for commercials or pulling advertisement spots for client review, I can say that I have never left a day of my internship not having learned something new.

Walking into this internship, I knew that there was going to be so much for me to learn–a thought that could intimidate any newcomer. But in the time that I have been at NatGeo, I have learned how to operate new software programs, learned about advertising and client relations, and now better understand how the team works as a whole to produce high quality content.

I am so grateful for such an amazing opportunity and I am so excited for all of the things to come for the rest of the semester.