Personalized, wacky workstations, vibrant colours, casually dressed people, microkitchens stuffed with variant options - the brick and mortar office seemed much young in spirit in the very first encounter. It was a sigh of relief. I had always flinched at the thought of formals and I fortunately landed up in the work culture customized for individuals like me. I started off my stint in Google as a marketing intern, Google+ and YouTube. The brands always mesmerized me. I had read a lot about the breakthroughs of the organization and here I had an opportunity to work in the domain. I was excited to the core.
On the very first day I was asked to read all about the brand and get the hang of all the marketing campaigns and activities revolving around it. And in a couple of days I was allotted two live marketing campaigns that were to be independently handled by me. Though it seemed like a herculean task, but I was looking forward to the enriching experience. I got a hands-on experience of planning such huge campaigns involving all the nitty gritties like organization of events, budgeting, creatives, terms and conditions, feasibility, and a lot of other nuances. I worked in close sync with the agency guys. And a very important takeaway was that they are a ‘hard nut to crack’. A lot of co-ordination involves dealing with and getting the right stuff from agency people. We have had all day meetings with them, calls, hangouts to get things in the right direction. Since I had to follow certain ground rules as specified by my mentor and there were certain requirements from the agency to be fulfilled, At times I felt like a poor intern stuck between the both. But eventually as a team we pulled out the planning of campaigns quite successfully.
Being a Psychology graduate (not a techie) initially it was a real challenge for me to start the VCs, to operate a black boxed device (black box I used to call it) in the conference room, I was confused about the meeting id to be entered etc. My manager used to say, “Technical devices never work in a tech firm”. And we used to share a good laugh. But eventually dealing with the conference room devices became a lot easier to my relief.
I never understood why all marketing people spent so much time attending meetings. And marketing research agencies took no restraint form their all pervasive pfaff (a lingo for too much wordiness). I remember a question asked by one of the marketing managers to the MR guy in the meeting, ‘What comes to your mind when I say YouTube’. And in no time he replied YouTube is like a Jungle and convincingly explained his complicated connotations and analogies to a fairly simple and easy question. I could only hold my laughter in such situations.
It was in June first week that my mentor was going all berserk over an AV that was not getting right as per the company’s demands. It was an important AV for internal communication. There have been a lot of changes that had happened for the past 2 weeks over it, but it was still not final. I was given the task of getting it right with the correct music, supers, beats, content and timeframe. There were creative guys of the agency who came over to the office and we worked on the AV for 2 full days and finally it was done. The half a minute AV took me 12 working hours each day to get it final. But it was quite appreciated later. And I also started analyzing different ads with their music, content etc with quite attention to details.
One day my mentor was going to attend Focus Group discussion to be conducted in an MR firm. She took me along. We were supposed to reach their office. To my surprise we landed in a residential area of South Delhi. The FGD went on for 3 hours and it was fun watching the college students. The insights and takeaways were great. I had ‘Ghar ki chai’ after ages in the home based office. It was heavenly.
Work and a lot more…
A new interesting and fun indoor sport that I explored more during my stint was foosball. We generally used to play foosball after lunch or at times during breaks. Though I sucked at it, but it was a fun experience. I was so bad at defending that my team always lost whenever I did so and it was an easy game for others. We were also suggestive of organizing of a foosball tournament within Google. We interns being ‘the best’ according to our assumption.
TGIF (Thank Google its Friday) was the evening always awaited by the Googlers when each Friday was draped in a particular theme. There was special cuisine that Friday evening and trigger of alluring weekend ahead. ‘Dilli Darbar’ was the best part of TGIF when Mr. Nikesh Arora, the Senior VP of the company visited the Gurgaon Office and addressed all the employees. The indigenous Dilli Darbar had all the famous and interesting things associated with Dilli culture ranging from kulfi, paan, bangles, turbans and what not. It was a feast for us. Barkha Dutt also added to the excitement in one the tgifs wherein she discussed her experiences and encounters during the Kargil war.
Bring your Child at Work was one of the events in the company when the employees were supposed to bring their kids at workplace. It was a day of utter enjoyment. There were different games set up for them in the mess, even food delivered was also kids specific. It was a different day in office altogether.
Surprises at Google were a part of the day. Once when I reached the office, there was a huge chest of chocolates placed centrally in the marketing bay. We later discovered that YouTube team was celebrating one of the campaign success of YouTube and got hold a hell lot of awesome chocolates.
Interns Offsite’ came as a surprise for all the interns. It was a dayout with the HR guys. Indoor Ice-skating rink, iSkate, a sumptuous meal in Westin, HR activity like true colours made the bonding all the more memorable.
My stint ended with 6 kg more weight added to my body mass index, lot of schwags came handy (a Google T-shirt, android pen drive, key chains, laptop sleeve), a positive feedback form with a recommendation from my manager and needless to mention an enriching and a great learning experience. My Googley stint was very much practical implication of the adage "Work hard and party harder".
On the very first day I was asked to read all about the brand and get the hang of all the marketing campaigns and activities revolving around it. And in a couple of days I was allotted two live marketing campaigns that were to be independently handled by me. Though it seemed like a herculean task, but I was looking forward to the enriching experience. I got a hands-on experience of planning such huge campaigns involving all the nitty gritties like organization of events, budgeting, creatives, terms and conditions, feasibility, and a lot of other nuances. I worked in close sync with the agency guys. And a very important takeaway was that they are a ‘hard nut to crack’. A lot of co-ordination involves dealing with and getting the right stuff from agency people. We have had all day meetings with them, calls, hangouts to get things in the right direction. Since I had to follow certain ground rules as specified by my mentor and there were certain requirements from the agency to be fulfilled, At times I felt like a poor intern stuck between the both. But eventually as a team we pulled out the planning of campaigns quite successfully.
Being a Psychology graduate (not a techie) initially it was a real challenge for me to start the VCs, to operate a black boxed device (black box I used to call it) in the conference room, I was confused about the meeting id to be entered etc. My manager used to say, “Technical devices never work in a tech firm”. And we used to share a good laugh. But eventually dealing with the conference room devices became a lot easier to my relief.
I never understood why all marketing people spent so much time attending meetings. And marketing research agencies took no restraint form their all pervasive pfaff (a lingo for too much wordiness). I remember a question asked by one of the marketing managers to the MR guy in the meeting, ‘What comes to your mind when I say YouTube’. And in no time he replied YouTube is like a Jungle and convincingly explained his complicated connotations and analogies to a fairly simple and easy question. I could only hold my laughter in such situations.
It was in June first week that my mentor was going all berserk over an AV that was not getting right as per the company’s demands. It was an important AV for internal communication. There have been a lot of changes that had happened for the past 2 weeks over it, but it was still not final. I was given the task of getting it right with the correct music, supers, beats, content and timeframe. There were creative guys of the agency who came over to the office and we worked on the AV for 2 full days and finally it was done. The half a minute AV took me 12 working hours each day to get it final. But it was quite appreciated later. And I also started analyzing different ads with their music, content etc with quite attention to details.
One day my mentor was going to attend Focus Group discussion to be conducted in an MR firm. She took me along. We were supposed to reach their office. To my surprise we landed in a residential area of South Delhi. The FGD went on for 3 hours and it was fun watching the college students. The insights and takeaways were great. I had ‘Ghar ki chai’ after ages in the home based office. It was heavenly.
Work and a lot more…
A new interesting and fun indoor sport that I explored more during my stint was foosball. We generally used to play foosball after lunch or at times during breaks. Though I sucked at it, but it was a fun experience. I was so bad at defending that my team always lost whenever I did so and it was an easy game for others. We were also suggestive of organizing of a foosball tournament within Google. We interns being ‘the best’ according to our assumption.
TGIF (Thank Google its Friday) was the evening always awaited by the Googlers when each Friday was draped in a particular theme. There was special cuisine that Friday evening and trigger of alluring weekend ahead. ‘Dilli Darbar’ was the best part of TGIF when Mr. Nikesh Arora, the Senior VP of the company visited the Gurgaon Office and addressed all the employees. The indigenous Dilli Darbar had all the famous and interesting things associated with Dilli culture ranging from kulfi, paan, bangles, turbans and what not. It was a feast for us. Barkha Dutt also added to the excitement in one the tgifs wherein she discussed her experiences and encounters during the Kargil war.
Bring your Child at Work was one of the events in the company when the employees were supposed to bring their kids at workplace. It was a day of utter enjoyment. There were different games set up for them in the mess, even food delivered was also kids specific. It was a different day in office altogether.
Surprises at Google were a part of the day. Once when I reached the office, there was a huge chest of chocolates placed centrally in the marketing bay. We later discovered that YouTube team was celebrating one of the campaign success of YouTube and got hold a hell lot of awesome chocolates.
Interns Offsite’ came as a surprise for all the interns. It was a dayout with the HR guys. Indoor Ice-skating rink, iSkate, a sumptuous meal in Westin, HR activity like true colours made the bonding all the more memorable.
My stint ended with 6 kg more weight added to my body mass index, lot of schwags came handy (a Google T-shirt, android pen drive, key chains, laptop sleeve), a positive feedback form with a recommendation from my manager and needless to mention an enriching and a great learning experience. My Googley stint was very much practical implication of the adage "Work hard and party harder".