Here at Face we are always have various interns working in our office and this week we are honoured to have a Headbox member; the one and only Ashley Wilkinson! So we let him settle in for ten mintues and then we asked him to write a blog about his experience with us so far and we have to say he’s done a stirling job! So carry on reading to hear about Ashley’s time with Face and of course Headbox so far, we’re sure there’s more to come!
I joined Headbox just before I started university. That was about 3 years ago now and I have been lucky enough to work on lots of projects during my university experience. I think I found out about Headbox in a UCAS email and was tempted by the promise of rewards for my opinions. I am a pretty opinionated kind of guy and the prospect of being rewarded for big brands actually listening to my thoughts and ideas was really appealing.
I think it is a right of passage most students go through. You are about to start the next stage of your life and all of a sudden you realize that you actually have to start paying for things and so special offers, freebies, discounts and the like become a top priority. I signed up with lots of these research companies promising rewards for my opinions and answers in surveys but the vast majority have been the bane of my email account for 3 years. Every day I get at least 4 or 5 emails asking to take part in surveys but I have long since given up. I never received a single reward or had anything to show or any feeling that anything I was saying was really being used or actually felt to be useful by anyone.
However working with Headbox has been a totally different experience. I have worked on a variety of exciting projects with brands such as Doritos, Lynx and Dr Pepper. I am a particular fan of Doritos and a bit of a chilli fiend so Doritos and dip is a favourite of mine. A group of us got to try some new flavours and give some opinions on what new combinations of flavours we thought would work or would like to see in the shops. I got a real kick out of walking through Morrisons one day and actually seeing some of these new flavours on the shelves. Doritos then ran a competition for the public to come up with and film a new advert. Each week we voted for our favourite and then we picked a winner. Again, it was exciting to then see this advert on television and be able to say to my friends that I had been a part of the process of picking the winning advert.
I am now here at Headbox HQ interning for a few weeks to see how the company works and to get involved in as much as possible. This is the field that I want to get into once I graduate in the summer so I am hoping to make some contacts and see how this industry works. The office is very relaxed, everyone has been really friendly and it feels like a great place to work. So far I have helped with some social media projects, researched opinions online and helped record some information from an online community.
