Hey, My name is Maeve Culligan, I’m currently heading into my final year in BSc Food Marketing and Entrepreneurship here at Cork University Business School at UCC.
In our 3rd year, we get the opportunity to go out on work placement to apply what we’ve studied in CUBS at UCC to a company. In March of this year, I started my work placement at Gym+Coffee, which some of you may know as an Irish athleisure brand.
As you may be thinking, Gym+Coffee is not a business within the food industry and this was partly why I decided to contact them for a work placement position for the 6 months. I wanted to take his opportunity to gain experience within another industry and see how my knowledge could be applied across different industries while also learning a lot about the retail and fashion sector.
During the last 6 months I have had the opportunity to work on the Product Marketing Team, my role involved curating an occasion around a particular product, to allow the customer to link that occasion to a piece of clothing making their purchase choice much easier.
Once a month I got the opportunity to travel over to London, this was mainly for new product campaign shoots but where we would get as much occasion content alongside a bigger campaign.
This was to utilise the models, professional photographers, locations and props but also to create content on our phones. Before these shoots, we would map out mood boards, find inspiration for content, and ensure all products were ordered and everything was organised accordingly but this doesn’t mean you don’t need to be able to adapt as it doesn’t always go to plan.
There is a huge movement in how we advertise now with UGC (user-generated content) and social media becoming the new norm for a business to promote themselves. This was a huge role I had during my time at Gym+Coffee as it was essential to move with the trends within an industry where a marketing campaign can be old news overnight.
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Just as I started in March, the company also started a big expansion into wholesale, this was very exciting and an area I gained so much knowledge in. Every company can work very differently, using different systems, and different software and need different assets supplied. The software and communication experience I got here was invaluable.
I thoroughly enjoyed my 6-month work experience and think it is such an amazing opportunity CUBS at UCC gives its students, to gain real knowledge in the workplace, and learn new skills. It is also an incredible personal experience to grow, learn your weaknesses and strengths, network and get an idea of what you may or may not want to do once you complete your final year at UCC.