jmachado’s Articles at WOW Fellowship Blog

The End of My Internship at Small Army

This past Thursday, I finished my time as account services and social media intern for Small Army and Small Army For A Cause. So it’s safe to say the end has been very bittersweet for me as it is never easy to say goodbye to a place I genuinely enjoyed being a part of. I already miss being a part of the Small Army team and being able to work with all of my coworkers there. I will especially miss all of the .gifs and memes exchanged in the office email chains. That being said, the end has really made I appreciate all of the experiences I’ve made along the way. Every experience has taught me many valuable lessons and created new opportunities. Through these new lessons and opportunities, I can thankfully say that I transformed from a student who originally felt like I was not for ready for life after college into one who can now comfortably say I feel confident for life in the workforce.

Since my last blog post, these last few weeks have flown by. My responsibilities at Small Army slowly transitioned into focusing solely on the Be Bold, Be Bald! cancer fundraiser. As most of the planning had been completed, I focused mainly on customer service, social media, and scheduling our emails. For customer service I worked to finalize commitment from beneficiaries, handle orders from the Bald Shop, and to answer questions from participants. One of the things I’m most proud of was securing Lowell General Hospital Team Walk for CancerCare as one of the beneficiaries of the fundraisers. It was exciting to be one of the major contributors behind bringing on board such a large and successful non-profit foundation, especially since it is located 10 minutes from my hometown of Dracut. As for the social media and email scheduling my assignments were to run the Be Bold, Be Bald! Facebook event page and to use our email marketing service provider MailChimp to schedule every email we had written to be sent out leading up to the event. In the last few days, I had two exit interviews with different Small Army coworkers. They were very helpful and were perfectly representative of Small Army’s goal to make each intern have as worthwhile an experience as possible. I hope my exit interviews will help Small Army make future internship experiences even better than mine.

I would like to end by giving many thanks to all at the Small Army team and by listing the top 15 lessons I learned as an intern there. I will be forever grateful for having the opportunity to spend this summer as a Small Army intern and I am thankful to them for making this such an invaluable experience.

Foo Fighters – Learn To Fly – YouTube

Thank you Small Army. (This is a Foo Fighters reference for KC Cole in the media department)

15 things I learned this summer:

Be Nice to everyone: You never know where your life will take you
Smile: Smiling is contagious and has a positive impact on the workplace.
Be Organized: Take notes, keep a to-do list, create a calendar for deadlines and meetings.
Network, Network, Network: Attend company outings and strike up conversations with other people at the event. You never know whom you will meet.
Understand that you are not perfect: You are going to make mistakes. However, what is important is what you learn from the mistakes and how you use them to make better decisions in the future.
Have confidence, but stay humble: Confidence can be very rewarding, but it is important to stay humble and to understand what crosses the line.
Keep Learning: Whether it’s new technology, research techniques, or job skills, the more you know, the more of an asset you are.
Find a role model(s): Learn what they have done and continue to do in order to be successful.
Understand how tasks get done: How does a project start and what is the process to complete it?
Understand and Meet deadlines: Completing work when it is due will solidify coworkers’ trust in you. If you ever find yourself in a situation in which you cannot meet a deadline, it is important to take responsibility to effectively communicate that information to your team. Being aware of the situation will allow the team to adapt more effectively.
Take on extra tasks, but do not overcommit: Helping coworkers complete projects is great, but if you overcommit on projects it will be difficult to meet deadlines.
Call people on the phone: If email is not successful, pick up the phone and talk. Phone calls allow you to give a personal touch.
Make the most out of every job: You never know what you will learn. Even the most monotonous jobs can have hidden benefits.

– James Machado ’16

Small Army Midseason Review

As I looked at the calendar this week, I was surprised to realize that I had reached the halfway point of my internship at Small Army and Small Army For A Cause. Just like every summer, the weeks have flown by. In the whirlwind of time speeding by, I realize just how far I’ve come—I’ve learned so many new things, met so many new people, and made so many memories along the way—and it’s only the halfway point! With that, I’m going to share how my time as Small Army and Small Army For A Cause has progressed and all of the experiences I’ve had along the way.

Experiences

Small Army does a great job of bringing interns into the mix with our clients. I’ve learned more than I could have imagined working on the different teams assigned to each client. Performing research for our client Zillion and their platform Zillion Health really opened my eyes to the telehealth industry. With this breakthrough cloud technology, our era will see a convergence of online cloud platforms that enable us move from the reactive health care system that we all know so well and transition to a much more preventative health care system that helps to keep us healthy each and every day.

Another client I’ve had the opportunity to become acquainted with is SolidWorks. Based out of our very own city of Waltham, SolidWorks is a 3D “solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) software program” It allows “engineers, designers, and other technology professionals…to take advantage of 3D in bringing their designs to life” (Company Info SOLIDWORKS). Their software allows businesses like Astrobotic, a company that “flies hardware systems into space for companies, governments, and universities,” to make space exploration a norm across the globe. Astrobotic plans to make our generation the first to live on the moon. Through SolidWorks’ 3D modeling program, Astrobotic is able able to streamline the process in which it designs and simulates their lunar modules to the point where SolidWorks’ simulations will make it affordable for more people than ever to fly to the moon and beyond (About Astrobotic).

(Screenshot showing the 3D CAD capabilities offered by SolidWorks via http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/solidworks-prosthetic-gks-1.jpg)

(Rendering of the Astrobotic Lunar Polar Prospector Rover Design via http://www.parabolicarc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/polaris_astrobotic.jpg)

While all of these experiences have been eye-opening, the best experience I’ve had thus far at Small Army was being a part of the commercial shoot team for Mass Eye and Ear which took place at the beautiful Artists for Humanity building in Boston. This would normally be a fantastic event for anyone interested in advertising and film, but it was even more fantastic for me as it allowed my world to come full circle. When I was a child at the age of 3, doctors at Mass Eye and Ear performed surgery to remove a rare benign tumor known as a congenital cholesteatoma from my left eardrum. Not only did the surgery save my ability to hear, but it saved my life as early detection caught the tumor before it could spread. Now 19 years later, I find myself on a team that helped Mass Eye and Ear produce a commercial.

(Inside the set at the Artists for Humanity building for the Mass Eye and Ear commercial shoot)

(Another set at the Artists for Humanity building for the Mass Eye and Ear commercial shoot)

(Photo of the camera used for the commercial shoot)
Lastly, since joining Small Army, the main account I have worked on is Small Army For A Cause’s Be Bold, Be Bald! cancer foundation. A lot has happened since we last spoke as we are now in the final stages of planning the event in order to make it an even bigger success this year. We have been working on all types of event planning and coordination projects including developing this year’s Google Adwords advertisements, developing event apparel and other promotional items, collaborating with our PR team Ring Communications to improve our social media presence along with our brand recognition, working with a company called Mavrck to develop a reward community for our participants, using the MailChimp email platform to send emails to our associates, and many more. Within the next week, the planning and coordination should be almost complete and we will transition into the peak stages of the fundraiser as participants start to order bald caps and apparel, set up their teams, and begin to raise funds.

Looking Forward

I am looking forward to my last month working for Small Army and Small Army For A Cause. It will be exciting to see how the next few weeks unfold.

Works Cited

“About Astrobotic.” About. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jul. 2015.

“Company Info SOLIDWORKS.” Company Info SOLIDWORKS. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jul. 2015.

The Small Army of the Advertising World and its Cancer Kicking Pal, Be Bold, Be Bald!

Last week I started working for the advertising agency Small Army and it’s not-for-profit cancer foundation Small Army For A Cause, which runs the Be Bold, Be Bald! cancer fundraiser each October. It is located in the historic Horticultural Hall on Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston and is right across the street from the famous Symphony Hall, home of the Boston Pops. It is in a beautiful area of Boston, and it is only a short walk away from the Prudential Center, Boylston St., and Newbury St.

(https://goo.gl/maps/0CLTW)

Small Army and Small Army For A Cause are some of the most creative businesses I have ever come into contact with. Small Army may be an ad agency, but they actually consider themselves to be “Storytellers for Confident Brands.”

“We consider ourselves professional storytellers but the industry we reside in is called advertising. We don’t believe advertising works anymore and that building campaigns off of key messages is outdated. We believe that when a person receives over 3,000 messages a day that odds are, they’re not paying attention to you.

We believe that marketing is about sharing stories and creating relationships. It’s about creating a conversation and arming people with the story about you that resonates with them. As a result, they want to share it with their friends.” (http://smallarmy.net/who-we-are/)

(smallarmy.net)

Small Army For A Cause, which runs the national cancer fundraiser Be Bold, Be Bald! each October, is just as creative. Taking place wherever you are, “participants go bald by boldly wearing a bald cap (or very boldly shaving their head) to honor those who bravely fight cancer and raise money to help fight back. Participants get sponsored for their bold move, and choose the charity they want their proceeds to benefit.” Since it’s creation in 2009, close to 11,000 people have raised approximately $1 million dollars towards cancer awareness and research. (http://beboldbebald.org/cmspage/5/event-details)

Heading into my first day, I was very excited. I had previously worked with a few people in the office, CEO Jeff Freedman and Jen Giampaolo, last summer as a marketing consultant for Small Army For A Cause’s Be Bold, Be Bald! cancer fundraiser as a part of the JBS Marketing program. With their help along with the help of many Brandeis students and faculty, we established a successful pilot program at the university and raised over $4,000 towards cancer awareness and research. However, this summer I will not only focus on Be Bold, Be Bald!, but I will also focus on many of the advertising agency’s accounts as part of my role as Account Services and Social Media Intern. Some of these accounts include Reebok One, Sage Bank, Blue Hills Bank, Long’s Jewelers, SolidWorks, Direct Tire, GymIt, General Electric, Salonweek, WGBH, Boston Medical Center, and Bugaboo Creek. (Small Army)

I had seen the office a few times before, so I knew how close-knit and friendly the workspace and my fellow coworkers would be. It’s funny though because growing up as a kid during a time when Mad Men was your only source of what ad agencies were like, you would expect a very structured, suit-and-tie workplace that is filled many individual offices and cubicles. You wouldn’t expect a wide-open, quirky workspace filled with a bunch of enthusiastic workers, and not to mention pictures of photo-shopped cat images, crazy memes, and artwork around every corner.

Small Army – See the Space

Besides the cool office space and work environment, my assignments have been very engaging and interesting. I have worked a lot on the social media, infrastructure, and customer management for Be Bold, Be Bald!, worked with a team to do marketing research for Southern New Hampshire Immediate Care and for the urgent care industry as a whole, and worked with a group to develop a new, innovative website for Blue Hills Bank. Not only have these assignments been interesting and engaging, but Small Army encourages interns to reach out to members on specific projects in which they might be interested in, join in on client calls, attend internal agency meetings, attend brainstorming sessions for clients, and many more.

I look forward to the rest of my time working at Small Army and hope to transform into one of the many “professional storytellers” at Small Army and Small Army For A Cause.