Lug Nuts, Loaded Knuckles, and Chassis Oh My!

Hi there, i’m Amanda, an advertising major with a concentration in account management. This spent this semester interning with Dorman Product, a leader in the after market automotive parts industry. Located in Colmar PA, I spent an hour traveling each way three days a week. Waking up Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 and stopping by Richies on the way to the train became my morning routine.

At Dorman, we are not employees,were contributors, because every new idea is welcomed and valued. Just from this, you can tell that Dorman is a welcoming place, which was only brought to light further once I began that cold January morning.

Working at an automotive parts company may seem a little unusual for an internship but so far, it has been nothing but thrilling. As the marketing intern I had the chance to work with each contributor in the department. Throughout my days at Dorman, my supervisor Lee and I developed SMART goals for myself, to better shape my experience here.

Since I got to have the time to sit down with each member of the department I got to see a lot, from more management, to graphic design, videography,  and email marketing. Although my track is account management and i’m not the best artist, spending time with the graphic designers and videographers was especially cool. I had a lot of interest in what they got to do everyday. Learning from them was super valuable and inspired me to take a class on design and working with all the different programs available.

With about 130,000 parts, we have a lot to do everyday. developing content for ourselves and for customers like NAPA and O’Reilly. With a revamp of the product descriptions and an overhaul of our YouTube channel, I have gone through countless parts for issues and discrepancies on multiple channels, from tedious work, to planning campaigns I was able to do a little bit of it all.

I also got to take a lot of lead in the promotion of the annual car show. I developed a marketing plan and campaign, ran Facebook ads, as of today they’re still running and have made over 63,000 impressions. Being able to create and implement ads that people will actually be served is pretty cool. After the car show is over, were going to be changing up the website. I wire framed and mocked up a new model. My ideas and suggestions are heard and taken into consideration just like any other contributor.

Dorman has given me such a valuable experience and a lovely semester, I had the opportunity to bend my internship to what I wanted it to be, I was also able to work from home which was great when I did. Overall my time spent here has been fantastic and i’m excited to stay with the company through the summer!