Hi, I’m Allison Emple. I am a junior at Champlain College majoring in International Business with a minor in marketing. I’m from Milford, Connecticut and I really love rock climbing, traveling and photography. While I am studying abroad with Champlain Abroad Dublin, I am also very fortunate to have an internship with HKM Media which creates and publishes the local magazine Totally Dublin along with the Dublin Tourist Guide.
So far, I have been working with the sales team helping them in various tasks to promote brands in the Totally Dublin magazine as well as searching for leads that could be used in upcoming issues of the tourist guide. To even begin this process, I had to find 100 brands that I thought should advertise in the magazine by learning more about the demographics on who reads the magazine and what they are interested in. Once I had my list ready, I then had to gather company and contact information for those brands along with their media agency and brand managers.
While researching this, I also helped find leads for events that will be occurring throughout the year, such as The Jameson International Film Festival and The Vodafone Comedy Festival. These leads are helpful to include around the same time as the event so tourists can check out other local sites around Dublin while they are in town for the event. Both tasks were challenging at first since I didn’t know much about the local culture, but I have been able to gain a better perspective on what Dubliners like to do throughout the year since both magazines focus on what is going on locally. Thus far, this internship has been pretty awesome at giving me the inside look at how marketing is done for a magazine as well as helping me indulge in the Irish culture by showing me fun local things to take part in.