Would You have an Intern Develop Strategy?

In 2008, I received an email from a colleague with a link to a podcast produced by three of the Sun’s 300 or so interns.  It was one of those evenings when I had time on my hands, so I listened.  The podcast was a fast-paced, spirited, take-the-bull-by-the-horns discussion on how to use social networking to do what the company’s enterprise applications could not.  

It became a wakeup call.

The problems they discussed were familiar: lack of management support, few juicy projects to work on, students wandering through an enterprise culture, an absence of good tools to get their jobs done.  But, the solutions were not.

I understood the gist of what they were doing, but the ‘how’ was new to me.  The 25-minute podcast was peppered with terms I only vaguely understood - mashup, Facebook, Digg.  I was impressed and curious.  I also had that sinking feeling that the people you least expected to contribute much had quietly figured out workarounds to the sluggish enterprise solutions we had spent large sums on

I met with them the following week.  They were all perhaps 21 years old, and keen to explain what they were doing.  They described, example after marvelous example, why they didn’t care to use our enterprise tools, and how they collaborated more easily using cloud-based social applications.  I was dumbfounded.  My mind began racing with ideas for how to put their talent and enthusiasm to work on some meaty challenges.

Fast Forward to 2011

It came back to me as I read this Ad Age article describing how 5 ad agencies used interns this past summer.  They shared a common objective: how to attract young, new users to an offering.  Some of the outcomes are no-brainers (newspapers are dead) while others may be surprising:

• Millennials prefer Facebook to Twitter
• CNN is a trusted online news source
• They are not impulsive buyers, but active comparison shoppers

It is worth the read.

Takeaway

If you want to market to a young demographic, then use young talent with the agility to see around those corners that the rest of us will surely miss.