Those Interns
When Hannah Kate Mitchell, a senior business administration major at Washington and Lee, returns to Lexington and is asked what she did during her summer vacation, she can simply point people to one of the more popular videos on YouTube in the past month. Hannah Kate spent the summer in Boulder, Colo., as a full-time intern in the strategic planning department of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, where she helped develop the brand platform for the campaign for Brammo Powercycles. In addition, she developed research, presentation decks, conducted interviews, assisted in writing creative briefs, intercepts and even attended client meetings and other work for clients such as Dominos, Best Buy, Guitar Hero, American Express, Burger King and Coke Zero. Hannah Kate got the lead for her internship from alumnus Scott Miller of the Class of 1967. So all of that sounds fairly normal for an intern. But this was not normal at all. The considerable talents and services of Hannah Kate and her 37 fellow interns at Crispin Porter were auctioned off on eBay earlier this summer. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Brammo bid nearly $18,000 to get the interns to work on the project. You can see how the work went on the interns’ blog. OK, so all of that is pretty cool. But there’s more. The interns put together a rap video about what it’s like to be an intern, posted it to YouTube and got attention from all over, including this article on the Huffington Post. The video has received more than 52,000 views. If you haven’t seen it, take a look and you’ll know how Hannah Kate spent her summer vacation:
