West Ventures
Communications Intern, June-August 2021
West is a venture studio and team of market and brand experts with investor discipline. The team enables companies to define and defend their market opportunity with a brand people love.
I had the privilege this summer to learn and work alongside the West team with Eva Pullano, Head of Communications at West and an incredible mentor. We spent the summer positioning the West brand to potential partners through social channels, the West website, and the first-ever West magazine.
Although I was predominantly involved with the West brand, I had the opportunity to learn from West’s passionate teams of designers and videographers. I learned how brand and product strategies come to life through advertisements to reach consumers in need.
Check out the summaries of my work below!
LinkedIn and Instagram Strategy
I helped grow the West Instagram from its beginning over the course of my internship. This involved weekly meetings with the design team to brainstorm creative ideas and ways to engage our audience. After receiving the post visual from the designers, I would draft the copy to accompany the post and schedule the post timing. I also engaged with West clients and would re-post their work on our story.
On LinkedIn, I managed West’s profile of over 10,500 followers to showcase West’s work to potential clients, past partners, and PR agencies. We highlighted West’s work in strategy and design for clients and how West defined categories for brands to own and thrive within. The West LinkedIn also served as a spotlight for various team members and their voices, like Managing Partner Joanna Rees.
After working with the West social accounts for 10 weeks, I created a strategy report of which posts were working well, those that weren’t succeeding, and how West could grow their following and engagement online. I presented this report to the communications team so they could learn from the accounts and continue to grow West’s reach in the market.
I joined the West team when Eva was just beginning to brainstorm West Of Everything: West’s first publication that would take a deep dive into the brand team and West’s brand value of “Truth-telling.” I helped create the brand positioning for the publication for how West would market it to its different audiences.
Using my experience as the Poetry Editor for Helicon, Northwestern’s literary magazine, I also helped manage the West’s magazine organization and team content creation. This included editing pieces, crafting the story arc for the magazine, and meeting with team members to flesh out ideas. I loved listening to the thoughts of the team to help piece together a story that would showcase their unique perspectives and thought processes around truth-telling and branding. I also transcribed interviews and drafted outlines for Q&A features in the magazine.
Client Case Study for the West Website
The West website offers potential clients a look into how the strategy team researches and builds brands. I interviewed the strategy team behind Shutterfly to capture how West helped build their brand extension of Shutterfly Premium and manage team dynamics during a brand acquisition. I drafted a case study outline for the communications team for publishing once the Shutterfly work can go live online.
Learning from the West Team
As part of a four-person intern class, I had the opportunity to work with and learn from peers that were equally as passionate about brand strategy and entrepreneurship. Every week a West team member would give the interns a West Masterclass to teach us different parts of the West business. We focused on market segmentation, human-centered design, personal brand identity, brand persona and venture capital.