Fall Internship with INNOCEAN USA

Hello! My name is Stella Bauman, and I am a current junior. I am majoring in Communication Studies and minoring in Graphic Design. This semester, I got to work at INNOCEAN USA on the Hyundai social team. INNOCEAN is an agency with multiple clients running social media campaigns and working with all kinds of influencers and clients. The team I worked for this summer managed all of Hyundai’s social media accounts.

Some but not all of the members of the social team I worked with!

They create strategies, help develop content, post content, and work with customers via social media. I worked under the Director of Social Strategy Shareen Hill and learned about the process to create social posts throughout my time at INNOCEAN. As the Social Strategy Intern, I was given the opportunity to create a competitive audit about all of Hyundai’s main competitors. For this audit, I went through five main competitors’ social media feeds and counted how many times they posted between September and December—then compared those numbers to Hyundai. This task was meant to help show how Hyundai is doing in posting terms compared to its competitors. And to give them insights into what they should keep doing and what they need to do better. Also, as an intern at INNOCEAN, I got to work on a Capstone project with other interns in the office. We were given a prompt and had to create an entire campaign from scratch. It was a very unique and challenging, yet rewarding experience.

The interns that I worked on the Capstone project with!

I was able to understand each part of the process of building a campaign from scratch. At the end, once we were one hundred percent done with the campaign, we interns went to present our campaign to the client and the executives at INNOCEAN. This was such a cool experience and really made the internship so valuable.

I found this internship while browsing through LinkedIn one day. At first, it didn’t stand out because I had never heard of INNOCEAN. But, once I read about who INNOCEAN is and what kind of work they do, I was very eager to apply and thrilled when I got the opportunity to join the Social team and be a Social Strategy Intern. LinkedIn made it easy for me to apply and gave me all the information I needed, what role I would be in, and other important details to note before taking the internship. I was nervous to start at INNOCEAN, but my nerves instantly calmed after the first day. The team was so welcoming and kind from the beginning, and it made my experience so much better. Starting a new job can be very intimidating at times, but at the end of my time at INNOCEAN, those nerves were worth it because of the fantastic experience.

The courses I took this semester, alongside my internship, were beneficial when it came to working with professionals. I took Organizational Communication with Tess Buckley this semester, Moderations and Focus Groups with Kelly Anthony, and Influencers and Marketing with Matt Prince. All three classes gave me valuable information that helped me in this internship. Organizational communication taught me a lot about management styles and the types of management styles I do and do not like. It allowed me to apply those learnings to INNOCEAN, and I was able to understand how they operate. Focus Groups and moderation taught me a lot about managing a group of people and asking questions. Speaking up and asking questions to a large group of people, let alone professional adults has always been a difficult task for me, but this class let me practice this and helped me get a lot better at it. The influencer and Marketing class gave me valuable insights about working with influencers. At INNOCEAN, the social team works with influencers almost every day as they use influencers to promote Hyundai and their cars. In this class, I learned what working with influencers is like, and I was able to apply that to INNOCEAN. Overall, my communication classes gave me the knowledge I needed to succeed at INNOCEAN.

My internship at INNOCEAN and the School of Communication made me feel so prepared and excited for my future after college. On top of that, the office had great views, amazing company bonding events, and the best coffee! Even though I was unsure how I would like my time at INNOCEAN, I am glad it went the way it did and was such a positive experience. I look forward to more experiences like INNOCEAN and in the School of Communication.