A day in the life of Grace – a work experience student

First impressions can be powerful – especially when you’re stepping into an industry for the very first time. Grace shares a behind-the-scenes look at her experience, reflecting on what she got up to each day, what she learnt, what surprised her, and how the week changed her view of marketing.

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to a week of work experience, a week away from school and people you spend every day with where you know there is always a teacher that can answer your questions. That meant it was really nice when I found out I was to be here at Torpedo at the same time as another student on work experience, Joe, who felt the same. 

I’ve always thought that marketing was a bit of a fluffy job to be honest, just making things sound better than they are to encourage someone to do something, so I was looking forward to experiencing it myself to see if I was right.  

Here’s a summary of the week I had and everything that I leant, I hope you enjoy it! 

Day One – What’s a Brief??

At about 9:00 am on Monday morning, we were given our brief for the week, what we had to discover and develop. It seemed simple enough, come up with a way to develop this product into a new market. Simple it was not. Where do you promote it? How? Why choose that? Do you give it a new name? See what I mean. Well, Iain (founder of Torpedo), did this deliberately – at least I’m pretty sure he did it deliberately. Do you notice something? Think about it, I’ll give you a minute. 

How about now? No? Okay, guess I’ll have to tell you then. This is exactly what you have to think about and juggle in a day-to-day marketing job, wanna really know what Torpedo is all about, then do the work. And that’s what we did. Speaking of understanding Torpedo, we were also given a brilliant introduction as to what Torpedo does. It was so interesting, especially the analogy on people being baby birds in a nest to explain different levels of work ethic.  After this, at 11:30, we had our first Microsoft Team’s call. It was all about marketing strategy and research, very very interesting.  

Day Two – What in the AI?  

Tuesday was a whole other ball game. As someone who is not all that great at art, or AI prompts, or just creative in general, I had my mind blown by the potential AI has to boost our efficiency in the workplace. Also on this day, first thing in the morning (9am) we were made to feel like part of the team, when we joined the whole company ‘IT talk’. That’s the brilliant thing about Torpedo, it’s one family, everyone supports everyone. That’s just how it is here, and it’s perfect.

Back to AI though, I must say that I was very proud of myself for generating my first proper AI image! It perfectly reflected my brief and with some help from creative, it looked like a professional promotional image. I was so excited, and again it really shows the helping environment here, the creative team were more than happy to immediately help me create my vision instead of expecting me to do it alone.

We also had a meeting about one of the clients and got to have a call with a media partner that Torpedo works with. We had a meeting with the creative team too, and they showed us some really cool stuff that they had been working on for clients.

We were also made to feel part of the team at lunch. When we went into the conservatory area, we sat on a separate table just the two of us and immediately, anyone sat around the big table said that we could sit with them and that they “don’t bite” and we had a great time laughing with them all. 

Day Three – Going Up Top 

On the Wednesday, we were upstairs, with all the amazing creative team, who I must say, are hilarious! At 9:30 we had a meeting with two of the creative team who have been developing campaigns for the clients of Torpedo. We also got shown the different AI tools that get used in the process, which was so cool to see, I will definitely be giving them a go at home. After this, we had a meeting with the content strategy team, and the people that manage all the accounts and build the relationship with the clients. They are the Account Directors and Managers.

For the rest of the day, we worked on our projects and managed to get some really good ideas down and, with some help, I even managed to use an AI tool to develop a short video clip that helped support the points of my proposal.  

Day Four – Meetings Galore!!

How do adults do it?? I was functioning on four hours of sleep after a concert on Wednesday night, and I had not one, not two. Actually, this could take a while. I had a total of four meetings! One was at 9am, the next at 9:30, then another at 10:00 till 11:00 then at 12:00 till 1pm. All of them were so interesting, the 9am was a brief intro into the client and what Torpedo has done and is doing for them ready for a meeting at 2, but the client sadly cancelled so we didn’t get to do it.

The 9:30 was a really, really interesting talk on targeted marketing which helped me with some of my campaign strategies. The 10am meeting though was possibly my favourite from this week. It was all about the background of Viewteam, the brilliant software that Torpedo offers as a product. We looked at all of the coding behind it, definitely my kind of thing.

The last of the four was all about videography and the campaigns that use motion advertising. It was so cool to see the process that they go through to develop what the client wants. By the time we finished the meeting though, we were both starving, thank goodness it was lunchtime.

Just before the end of our lunch break, we went on a walk to see the pigs that are here, we went with a couple of people that work here and it was such a nice walk. The pigs were sooo cute! Then for the rest of the day, we worked on our projects. 

Day Five – Presenting (AKA – Needing New Underwear)

Safe to say, I’m not the most confident public speaker, but somehow, I pulled it off, presenting my idea of what Viewteam could be developed into. Even when it was in front of Iain, Will (the creator of Viewteam) and Joe who is a creative whizz. It was fun, actually. They made me feel very at ease while presenting to them, and I could tell they really were listening which was such a good feeling; it really boosted my confidence in what I was saying.  

That is sadly the end of my week here. I don’t want it to end though. Reminiscing on the week in the last few hours I have on it has made me feel really proud of what I’ve achieved and what I’ve learnt. So, here’s the big question that I must ask, mostly of myself: Has my view on marketing changed?  

This week, while on work experience at Torpedo, I had my first proper experience of what marketing really is. It isn’t all fluffy language selling. It’s about understanding the client and what they want. It’s about listening to what they have to say. Marketing is the integral part of what makes a brand individual; and I understand that now.  

Arguably, the most interesting part of marketing as a job is the strategic side of the process. When do you make the post? When do you do the launch? How do you ensure that the people you really want to see the campaign do? It’s all key moments within planning.  

Marketing also goes out in multiple branches, creative, copyright, videography, website construction, and so much more. I’ve learnt more in one week about all of this than I did in three years of doing a business studies GCSE. Doesn’t that show how amazing this team is at their jobs!  

So, in short, yes, my perspective on marketing has changed, massively. I have a whole new respect for just how much goes into it and just how much hard work it takes to perfect even the smallest detail that is pivotal for a brand.  

And now my question to you: Are you going to be the baby bird that waits for information to be fed to you, or are you going to be the fledging that goes out and discovers the answers themselves? I for one would like to think of myself as the fledgling; especially after the valuable life lesson that this week of work experience has given me.