Hello, Sampad readers, I am Aanya, a final year Theatre and Performance student from the University of Warwick. For three weeks, I have been working with the Sampad team as a Marketing Intern for my Placement module at university, but I was not prepared for the scope and scale of tasks and skills I would undertake (in a positive way).
From emailing contacts to editing social media posts I feel like I have done it all! I’ve been really lucky with the fact that there have been three events on over the course of my time at the company which meant that I was marketing multiple things: Asian Spring, Tribhangi Dance Theatre’s UK tour, and Midday Mantra, all of which demanded different elements to come together to bring audiences to the event which required a variety of channels to engage audiences in dynamic ways.
I not only learned how the back end of software like Meta business suite, WordPress and Mailchimp worked (by ways of scheduling posts and uploading to the website) but was trusted very early on in my placement to post on various channels under the marketing umbrella. Curating carousel posts, writing my own captions, blogs (like this one), short and long form videos differently edited and formatted for TikTok and Instagram compared to LinkedIn for example. Alongside the blog posts I also got to feature on the company’s social media myself as part of trends (the baby photos of the team), and in reels which expanded on blog posts and encouraged followers to visit the website, buy tickets and learn more about production companies like Tribhangi do, and see what events like Asian Spring looked like.
It’s been so much fun, not only networking and working with the Sampad team but also having backstage access, being a contact when liaising with ticketholders; and meeting Tribhangi Dance Theatre personally and going out swan boating with the company.
I’ve learned so much from editing, uploading, how to write engagingly, and increase accessibility for all channels that audiences can navigate the company media. And I have additionally developed my skills in montage edits, descriptions of visual media and balancing the line between fun and formal depending on which platform the media is being posted to.
The experience has been invaluable not only in terms of marketing experience, but the team have been so welcoming, collaborative and creatively engaging to work with! I truly did not expect to have gotten such a diverse and well-rounded experience and am grateful for all I’ve been trusted to do.
