(Editor's Note: This is the fourth in a series of stories about students in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications completing summer internships.)
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Katie Rowley believes in following and exploring her interests wherever they take her, even if it’s outside of her major. As someone looking to work in sports marketing, she never imagined she would be working with big-name entertainment clients such as the Food Network, Lionsgate, Paramount and Warner Bros. as part of a summer internship.
“It’s surreal,” Rowley said. “It’s definitely not something I thought I’d ever have the opportunity to do, so I’m really happy.”
Rowley, a rising senior majoring in journalism, is completing an internship with Allied Integrated Marketing — the largest advertising and marketing agency in the Philadelphia area.
Allied Integrated Marketing works to get the word out about new products, TV shows and movies through sponsored events and social media for large entertainment, culture and lifestyle industry clients.
Rowley is the digital and analytics intern, and her job is to maintain and grow the marketing agency’s social media pages, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
“I’ve found through my past and current internships, marketing has taught me a lot,” Rowley said. “I feel like even if your major isn’t exactly what you’re interning with for the summer, that’s not a bad thing, it just expands your skill set.”
Her favorite part of her internship thus far was representing Warner Bros. at Wizard World Philadelphia, a multiday event focused on fantasy-related entertainment, including comic books, movies and television. While promoting upcoming movies such as “The Meg” and “Tag,” she got the chance to meet Jason Momoa, known for playing Khal Drogo in “Game of Thrones.”
“I ended up really enjoying it, just because you get to see so many different kinds of people and events in one giant room — that was really cool,” Rowley said. “And I learned how to promote movies, especially for larger clients like Warner Bros.”
Rowley said she also has learned a lot about balancing multiple projects. Her supervisor and a senior account executive at Allied Integrated Marketing, Lisa Jefferson, said Rowley is doing a great job being thorough in all of her duties.
“Katie is a really great self-starter,” Jefferson said. “She’s very creative with what we’ve been currently working on, which is curating content for our Philadelphia office’s social media pages. She’s doing a great job coming up with her own ideas for it, coming up with content that we can schedule in the future, and creating a content calendar. She is just overall a really great intern to have on board for the summer, and she is really engaged with what she’s working on.”
Prior to this internship, Rowley worked in customer relations and sales at Beaver Stadium, helping customers purchase sports tickets and providing them with information about games and events.
She also has been doing remote sponsorship and marketing work for the past four years for a small sports media company, which was the work that initially made her realize she enjoys doing sports marketing.
Rowley’s dream job is to end up doing sports marketing for an NFL team such as the Philadelphia Eagles or the New York Jets. She feels her current internship is helping prepare her for that job because she is encouraged daily to come up with and pitch her own ideas.
“They’ve been really encouraging about speaking up even though I’m a new intern, so it’s given me the confidence and initiative to share my ideas, which I think will help me a lot when I’m starting my first actual job,” Rowley said. “Also obviously with football, a lot of it is promotional events and marketing, so learning how to work in entertainment with large clients I think will help me greatly with sports teams.”
She has already been in communication with the Jets, inquiring about a full-time position in sales service after she graduates. In that role, Rowley would get to assist with concerts, suite operations, training camp and other promotional events.
“If that ends up working out, that would be my dream job,” Rowley said.