Fretting about a meeting, then just minutes later realizing it’s not until the next day, I’ll borrow Wilde’s “only dull people are brilliant at breakfast”, and leave it at that. Hello Monday!
Back after a hugely fun Halloween weekend, it’s time to wrap up my project at Cerealia. It feels a bit sad so soon be leaving the fifth floor and the great people here (and the great people at all Cerealia sites!), while at the same time there is so much left to do in such a short time! Stuff learnt about reality:
- Everything takes a lot more time than you thought
- And it is a lot more complex, too
- And I miss access to all the university kick-ass data bases (never thought I’d say that)
It took a while to get in to my project and department, which felt really frustrating, I want everything to happen now. Apparently it is perfectly normal that it takes a while to feel comfortable in a new company, new department and on a new project. Both my supervisors are very senior and very competent. Accordingly, they are also very busy and far from involved in my day-to-day concerns. While at first feeling a bit lost, I soon realized that’s just how they lead and certainly not a display of lacking interest. Freedom and responsibility – something I appreciate a lot, as soon as I feel comfortable to take initiatives. People around me are happy to answer questions whenever they can – like Pelle the former trainee opposite who’s helped out with everything from lunch places to contacts and the mysterious travel booking system.
Putting together my project, I read a lot of trend reports, talk to people in market & innovation and sales, meet with suppliers and suppliers’ suppliers, I google for pictures and inspiration and meet with different types of agencies working with trends and packaging. For example, I was lucky to meet Ian Rooney at a fair and he showed some of their absolutely brilliant designs – just nailing the essence of occasion, wit and simplicity, just look at the Cava bottle below. It is all super-exciting and while people always say “my work is not really about what I did at uni”, well, this connects to the stuff we had huge fun doing at uni thanks to cool professors such as our “marketing godfather” Michael Dahlén (below). Kind of just wish I had some more time to go deeper.. and deeper.. and deeper in to this. But then again, guess I’m a bit of a marketing nerd. The kind that takes pictures of great campaigns on the subway and discuss it with my friends…
Finally, and most importantly: I won the first weekly trainee quiz! It was all about tractors so now my country side image is forever set, but those are things you have to take in order to win 🙂 The tiebreaker was the speed of the record holder below – can you guess!?