James Nutter, a UMD econ major says the following about his summer internship with Digitas:
am doing an internship with Digitas in Boston this summer. I'm an economics major however the internship is in client finance. This an extremely interesting company on the forefront of digital advertising, and they are making breakthroughs in this field almost daily. I report directly to a client finance analyst and client finance manager as well as working with the rest of the team including the VP/Director Of Finance.
Digitas is a subsidiary of Publicis Groupe which is one of the three largest global advertising holding companies. Publicis Groupe has over 45,000 employees located in 104 countries and the global headquarters in Paris. Digitas itself has over 3,000 employees and is in 19 different countries and I worked in the headquarters located in Boston. I was privileged to not only work with Digitas and their clients but some of their sister agencies as well.
My specific job included but was not limited to the following:
* Providing accounting, analysis, budget, and reporting support to the organization and being directly responsible for helping operational managers analyze the business and initiate changes through the strategic use of information. (in layman terms I worked with the budgets of a variety of clients that Digitas works with.)
During this internship I gained a lot of knowledge specific to the everyday in and outs of the finance world. In doing my job I gained this specific training:
* Developed hands on experience at a margin based interactive marketing agency.
* Provided Digitas project managers with ad hoc reports that show actual hour and billable monthly amounts.
* Provided upper level management with travel expense analysis
* Invoice numerousness clients based on different terms, following up with the clients to improve cash flow avoiding aging complications.
* Developed a strong understanding of accounting concepts like debits/credits, as well as pass through and non pass through expenses.
* Opened and organized job codes for billable and non-billable purposes.
* Developed strong negotiation and interpersonal communication skills through constant interaction with upper level co-workers.
* Sarbanes compliant, able to provide on-the-spot backup documentation during audits.
* Developed proficient skills in excell, (V-lookups, Pivot tables, Etc), Lawson (accounting software), and Business Objectives (reporting software)
My everyday duties were not the only thing this internship consisted of. Every week the intern class received training from a variety of different capabilities which included; Creative, Media, Account Planning, Marketing, Strategy and Analysis, Delivery/Traffic, Marketing Operations, and New Business. All of these were extremly interesting and exposed me to a the digital advertising work as a hole not just the behind the scenes finance work that I did.
If this was not enough I also went to a variety of shared learning sessions which was the way teams showed their work off to a variety of clients and the company brought in some guest speakers. Some of these included talks on Iphone apps made by Digitas, CGI work, as well as a lecture by Steve Forbes.
On top of all of this I took part in an internship case study. Our class was split into three teams with counterparts in both Atlanta and Detroit whom we had to work with over the phone. We were to develop a pitch to win over a potential client using both creative and analytical components to our presentation. I am happy to say that I was on the winning team of this case study and it was quite the experience that I don't think i would have received anywhere else.
This was an amazing summer experience and I have nothing but good things to say about this company. They offer internships in every capability that I listed above so I recommend to anyone applying for internships to try Digitas as you will not only gain knowledge in your field but in the entire ad agency world.
