Mock Pitch at Digitas Health

If you read my previous post about interning at Digitas Health I mentioned that I worked on a mock pitch that was presented to senior executives in NYC. During the last month of the internship the Philadelphia and NYC interns were put into groups and given the assignment which was for a fake type 2 diabetes medication. My group consisted of 4 other interns from 3 of the NYC offices. I was the media planner and the others were the creative, project manager, account planner and researcher.

I thought this project would have been a breeze since I have done so many advertising presentations at Temple but this was very different and challenging because I had to work with the other people in my group via email, Skype and Webex. It was challenging but gave me a little taste of the real world since you are not always going to work face to face with people.

I specialized the media plan for the project which consisted of DTC and HCP and branded and unbranded. Before interning at Digitas Health I was more familiar with traditional media then digital media. It was cool to see that the media plan I created was mostly digital media. This project allowed me to showcase everything I have learned this summer (which was a lot!)

There were a total of 5 groups that presented to senior executives (who were the judges) at the Digitas Health office in NYC. My group spent the whole month working hard on creating a campaign that would be different and strategic and we wanted the judges to see that. At the end of the presentation we got a standing ovation and said that they forgot we were interns for a minute. What they loved most about the presentation was that we told a story and we didn’t just present to them.

We were awarded 1st place and received a $100 visa gift card, Linkedin recommendations from all of the judges and a congratulations letter from the Publicis Healthcare CEO. What I learned from this project is to not procrastinate, how to communicate efficiently, time management skills, how important the “BIG IDEA” is and to practice, practice, practice before presenting.

If you would like to check out my group’s presentation you can here:

https://carlymcginley.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/phcg-intern-pitch-deck-winner-2014.pdf