Owned Media Intern Review

I really enjoyed my role as the Owned Media intern as it provided me with a full 360 degree experience of TWDC as I was able to work with so many different lines of businesses and franchises. I also was able to work with a numerous types of marketing platforms including TV, print, digital, social etc and was personally responsible for 7 Disney platforms. However, my managers were unsupported, condescending, patronizing and really did not encourage or support me throughout my time which really affected confidence at work.

I did not feel very valued as my managers would effectively bully me. The treatment I would receive if I made a mistake or something that was even out of my control arouse would often humiliating and demoralizing. It made me not want to do my tasks out of fear of making a mistake and receiving this treatment again. This was my first proper job and I am still a student in one of the largest company's in the world and they unrealistically expected excellence.

My managers did not support me at all. If anything I often saw my manager almost take pleasure when I wasn't performing well at work or if I was down about something as she on multiple occasions would ask me if i had been crying in front of people. I would have benefited from training from my managers given the amount of industry jargan the Media industry has. They simply expected me to know everything about the company and the role after a 1 week handover from the previous intern and did not account for the transitional period of me in my role. It seemed like they expected the same level of work that the previous intern who had worked there for a year to continue. When I would ask questions in the first few weeks they would just refer me to my handover notes.

I liked my role because I was always very busy as I had my own platforms and campaigns to manage as well as assisting my other managers with any projects they were working on. As our senior manager left before my arrival my managers split her workload between them and delegated a lot to me.

I initially did not realize how much responsibility I would have as an intern but really enjoyed the autonomy of my role. There were some software systems that even my managers did not work on and thus had to ask me about campaign possibilities on certain platforms.

The skills i developed will benefit me a lot in my career after university and am so grateful for the opportunity I had at TWDC as it allows me to be more confident in my abilities and experience I have as a marketeer.

The Disney office had a very positive atmosphere around the office as there are so many employees and interns. People are chatty and communicate with each other and it is a sociable place to work depending on your department. It can however, be very stressful when managers are continuously demanding and really unwilling to provide any help or direction.

Really well set up. However, not enough is done to check in on the interns in terms of their workload and treatment from management. We have our one to one meetings each week but it is difficult to raise any concerns we may have had. It also did not help that we were going through a merger at the time and so had no set team or structure and so was more chaotic than the previous year. HR should check in more with the interns.

The company release training programmes every quarter that you can sign up to which ranged from presentation skills to innovation learning etc.

I would not return to TWDC until I am much older and have gained experience elsewhere as there is a huge age gap in employees. I quickly saw that employees are either interns or manager and above with very few coordinators and other employees in between.

The company put on lots of social events for interns to allow us to get to know each other. We also had intern FB pages and chats to organize other activities and even if people had work questions.

I was living at home so only had to pay for travel but socializing was expensive because it was in London but you have so many different options and areas to explore that there are cheaper alternatives.

Nightlife in Hammermsmith is very limited but again you can get on the tube and go more central London for better nightlife.

The company did not really organize such activities but if you made your own friends then it was very easy to do yes.