LevLane Chronicles: Tales from a Media Intern
Hello everyone, my name is Noah Wolfe and I’m a senior at Temple University majoring in Advertising with a concentration in Media Planning.
Being a Media Intern at LevLane has made a major impact on my overall professional development. I was able to develop communication and time management skills. Throughout my summer, I was tasked with finding new connections, reaching out to clients/account leads for information and collaborating with my team. Each of these different tasks required extensive time management and communication skills that allowed me to ask questions and get my point across clearly.
After this summer, I’m very interested and passionate about the senior living side of the advertising industry. I had the opportunity to interview the heads of LevLane’s Senior Living Department and pick their brains about the ins and outs of what a campaign looks like from start to finish. I received such great feedback and insights that have made me extremely interested in the “boring” side of advertising.
Previously, I’ve worked in retirement communities for almost six years. I loved being able to hear the residents’ life stories and their interests. All my conversations with the residents have helped shape my view on senior living communities. After graduation, I hope to be able to tell some people’s stories through advertising so that others can see the amazing senior living communities and the good they have done for their communities.
Since LevLane is a small advertising agency, I’ve been able to see the benefit of working with such a tight-knit team. Being that we have so many clients and so few people, many employees wear a bunch of hats across different departments. As an intern, I had the opportunity to bounce around from team to team on different projects. This allowed me to get hands-on experience in different areas of advertising like paid social, paid search, programmatic, data analytics and media planning.
Other then the ability to learn different areas of the business, I believe the most positive aspect of working at LevLane is the people with whom I worked. Every employee has the same overall goal, and that is to help each other. I know it sounds crazy and you’re probably thinking “wouldn’t it just be to make money?” and to that I say yes and no. Without a goal to work together as team things get forgotten or missed. At LevLane everyone believes that if we can help each other, then we can provide our clients with the best service possible.
Throughout my internship my biggest influence has been Jeremy Johnson. He is the head of creative for senior living at LevLane and has been there for over ten years. Jeremy is currently living in Kansas City and visits the office in Philly every so often, but every time he comes in he always comes over and talks to me about how things are going and what I’m up to. Not only is Jeremy a great friend and mentor he is also extremely respected in his field, he has won countless awards and worked on major clients in the senior living side of the industry. I hope that one day I can work to be in his position and know that the team working under me is as confident in me as I am in Jeremy.
Going into this internship I didn’t really know what to expect. My first thought was “This is either going to go really well or extremely poorly.” After my first day, I knew that this internship was going to be a great experience both professionally and personally. I learned so much over the last 12 weeks that I had never even heard of in school and they are all things that I can use both my career and personal life.
Being that it is such a small family owned agency everyone has the opportunity to get to know each other and become like an actual family. I was nervous going into it because I thought it was going to be like a big advertising corporation where my manager would just give me grunt work that they didn’t want to do. To my surprise I was able to work on countless projects alongside my manager, which I believe made my experience so much better. It was like I was taken under his wing and he actually wanted me to learn and explore all the different departments instead of keeping me locked into one. I wouldn’t change anything I did during this summer because I was fortunate enough to meet and work under so many incredible people that I hope to stay in touch with in the future.
My advice for others looking for their first internship would be to apply to one that a professor knows of or recommends. I was lucky enough that Professor Allison Ebbecke mentioned a media planning internship at LevLane during my Intro to Media Planning class in the spring of 2024. She personally knew the head of the Media department, Dan Hall, and spoke very highly of him which made me comfortable to send in my resume and take an interview. Other than that, I would recommend trying to find one that your friend can work with you or has worked at in the past. This allows you to get a real understanding of what the company is like and how your friend felt about working there.
The main things I gained during my internship were skills such as communication, networking, professional development, time management, and simply how to work with other adults in your field while being a college student. I know that it may be nerve racking to walk into a new place with strangers but as long as you lean into it and have a positive attitude you will set yourself up for success. I know that everything I’ve learned are skills that I will be able to carry with me forever and I can’t thank Allison Ebbecke and LevLane enough for this opportunity.
