The Art of Busy Work

I know yesterday introduced you to who I am and why I am doing this but now I face the biggest task: glamorizing the art of busy work. Yes, I said there was an art but I’m not sure if people believe that it goes into companies. I guess this is my spiritual side showing and I have to be a guru in this place.

Yesterday, I had undergone the art of busy work with Kayleigh and Laura as my bosses. For an hour, I familiarized myself with who we would be working with: Right Now Against Bullying, Stop Drunk Driving now, Jayna Lininger, and Omnipoint. This first task, in busy work, gave me a look at what I wanted to know about every company and artist.

I wrote six blogs. The first blog was Esente. Then I wrote three blogs on bullying and three on drunk driving summarizing articles we found online. (We had to make sure we didn’t choose the same articles, of course.)

Finally, I was faced with the busiest task: a semester-long project finding independent contractors that were in need of service for Omnipoint. Aren and I were assigned five cities and we made sure to ask questions that were relevant to what we wanted to accomplish. This lasted for the rest of my day.

Today, we observed a meeting about how the mailing system works and understood the chain of command. I found a key phrase that is pertinent here: If it doesn’t work, you’re throwing spaghetti against the wall.

I have found that interesting especially when working on the contact lists. You keep moving and try to find the end goal even if you can’t always get the best results. It’s good to understand how to work against the obstacles and push forward to complete the final goal.

This goal is almost complete. I know we’re going home early after doing a lot of hard work. It may be busy but we will get through this. I look forward to teaching this to interns soon.

Alex DelGreco (ADG)

Southern New Hampshire University '16

PR Intern

FIRST DAY!

Today is my first day as a PR Intern at Esente Music Group. I am so excited to see what is in store for me in the next couple of months. So far, everyone is super friendly and the work environment seems fun. 

I have had a love for music for such a long time. Starting with my parents who have a very collective taste in music which exposed me to many different and great artists. I began to grow my knowledge of the music industry when I joined a student organization at the University of New Hampshire this year. I was hired into SCOPE (Student Committee on Popular Entertainment). This was by far the best choice I had made at UNH. 

SCOPE is responsible for bringing an promoting nationally recognized talent to UNH. It is all student run and all choices made are done my the members in the organization. This is something that I'v dedicated much time to and love the experience I have already gained. So far, I have put on 3 shows with SCOPE and was elected as the Business Manager for next year. I cannot wait to see what this organization can do.

Esente is another step I am taking to hopefully persuing a career in the music industry and can't wait to gain knowledge about the industry and the different aspects of it.

Aren Salmela 

PR Intern

University of New Hampshire

ADG's First Day

What does it mean to truly become esente?

That’s the question I ask myself as I work my first day.  When I look up the Italian word esente, it means free and clear. So far, the only thing that’s clear is the yawns I get from waking up at 5:45am to catch the bus to Malden and go inbound to North Station. The best things in life aren’t always free and it took work to get to where I am. Hence why I had to get a chai tea from Dunkins downstairs before I started my day and was the target of conversation with a man who wanted me to give him money (which I didn’t).  

(Quick advice: if a man approaches you before 8am at North Station and has contradicting stories [i.e. gave $200 to charity then says he got robbed, needs a ticket to South Station for a few bucks then needs $40 to take a bus to Birmingham], it is best to get security.)

Welcome to life in the music industry. A fast-paced revitalizing network that keeps moving where nothing’s handed and I have to work for what I want. And what do I want? A career in this industry. Why? As L. Boogie said, everything is everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ED4_LOeEY

For the next few minutes, feel free to listen to “Everything is Everything”, the soundtrack for my first blog post.  And listen to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, one of the best albums that you will hear in your lifetime. Believe me!

So here’s what you need to know.

The name is Alex. Alex DelGreco, but you can call me ADG. Y’all will know me, by the time I am done with these blog posts I will write.

Fun fact: I found out about this internship through Craigslist. I was sitting with my school’s career counselor and I had stumbled upon this opportunity. It seemed too good to be true and I had no idea what to expect. But I’m sticking this out to see where this opportunity will take me because I believe I am destined for this path and I want to see where this will take me.

I’m a senior at Southern New Hampshire University majoring in Communications.  I am an outgoing self-driven motivated man. I always find myself interested in analyzing data, creating interpersonal relationships, and aiming to please. I am ready to move out to California when I graduate and pursue a career in the music industry.

I have my own Bandcamp: adgofficial.bandcamp.com and I find myself always creating and producing new music I can use. I hope to create an empire I can sustain and build a legacy while bringing awareness to topics people don’t discuss in music.

But that’s just the beginning. I know that’s there more for people to know. I don’t want to give it all away.  Just remember change comes eventually. What is meant to be will be.

Namaste.

Alex DelGreco (ADG)

Southern New Hampshire University '16

PR Intern

And We're Back!

Thanksgiving break was a great time to clear my head and get rest before heading back to school and work. It was great feeling ready and refreshed before the start of the week.

This was a different week for me, since I got to go to a photo shoot with one of my colleagues. It was a great first time experience, since I've never been part of a photo shoot. I got to learn the entire process of taking a set of photos, for a client that was looking to introduce a new product into the market, and needed an updated set of photos with his new creation.

The main focus is still Ron's new slogan "More Funds Less Fun". Structural changes have been made in order to improve the efficiency of the company, this was done by introducing Laura's second team, of whom she's going to be in charge with in order to keep increasing lead conversion reates, which is still of utmost importance above all for the company.


Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Endicott College
DJ

Less Fun, More Funds...

…is the new company-wide slogan Ron introduced to the team today.

After an extensive meeting with the Onpoint team today, it was concluded that we had to focus on more specific things in order to increase lead conversion and revenue for the company.

The main focus was leads and sending more emails each week.  This is going to be achieved by having “Team 2” (as Ron referred to it), work on a series of projects that are going to benefit the firm in the long run, though the tasks at hand are going to be less fun and more repetitive with less creative aspects to them.

Fun and creativity has to be sacrificed for a short time before we can start targeting projects that entail a more creative aspect to them. In the long run, this is something that will benefit the company in numerous positive ways, financial growth being the main area of focus for this project.

I’m excited as always for new projects, since they all add new and valuable skill-sets to my daily thirst for working knowledge on business and marketing. In addition to acquiring business knowledge, I'm also going to implement skills I’ve learnt during my time at Onpoint and build on them.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez

Endicott College

DJ

Making progress

          I started the day by collecting leads for Onpoint's upcoming phoenix division. My lead numbers were a little low today because the business categories that I was focusing on had a lot of dead links and expired listings. I still managed to sort through them and find the companies that are still active.

           After that, I shifted my focus over to posting articles related to drunk driving and bullying. The drunk driving article was about a man who is now facing 7 years in prison for accidentally killing someone when he drove through a red light. Police found that he had a blood alcohol level that was three times the legal limit. The bullying article was about a high school student who had been shot and killed in what was probably a drug related incident. What made this especially tragic was that the student started using drugs and being involved in criminal activity after he had been bullied for putting on weight. The article greatly demonstrated how bullying can negatively transform a person. 

-Bijan Hennessey

Leads For Everybody

It was a very different week for me this time, since I was out of the office for a couple of days due to an illness. Regardless of that though, It's always nice to be back and feel welcome to my workplace.

Today the objective was lead generation and updating the blogs. For the first portion of the day, I spent my time collecting leads for the company, which I can definitely say I've gathered a great amount of working knowledge on. 

It's great to know that I know have a skill set, that allows me to create a list of leads, and organize them in such a way that the list can be shared and updated efficiently by people working in the organization.

The second half of the day involved generating leads for the "Don't Test Me" project, the list involves collecting the information of various blogs, Facebook and websites that area against animal testing, or are animal lovers in general.

As always, I'm very excited to see how much the project grows each week, and can't wait to see it finalized.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez

Endicott College

DJ

Another week gone, another week closer to success!

As every week goes by, it's satisfying to see the progress being made on the 'Don't Test Me campaign we've been working on for the last month.

We had a meeting today in order to go over aspects of the project that are ready to be taken to the next level. We also followed to discuss some key characteristics that have to be solved before the end of the week in order to keep pushing through at a steady pace without falling back on details that can be solved quickly.

The excitement to see this project reach the final steps keeps increasing as we move forward and work out all the elements that are going to make it a successful one.

I'm very proud to say I'm working on a project that's looking to make a difference, raise awareness, and most importantly, inform people on what happens inside animal testing facilities, and they choices they can make in order to not support the companies that encourage it.


Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Endicott College
DJ

A Good Day for Introspection

Today was a very different day to others. Or least the beginning of the day...

As I made my way into the office today, I walked into an office wide meeting Ron was holding.
It was very interesting having Ron update everybody on how things are going. I've never been involved in such a meeting, though I'm glad to say it was also a positive one.

After having detailed the next steps we as a company are going to take, Ron proceeded to emphasize how the new road the company has to go down through is crowdfunding, and being able to make it a successful businesses, starting with the "Don't Test Me" campaign we've been working on for the last month.

It was great hearing how, even though we have some problems to push through in order to take the company to the next level, there are many positive things that were highlighted , in order to motivate everybody and reach that magical "boiling point" to create steam and be successful.

As every day goes by, my working knowledge about Onpoint and Esente increases, which leads me to become more efficient at daily tasks and aids my understanding of new ones thrown my way. I'm excited to say how comfortable I have felt here, and how welcoming everybody has been.

Today made me reflect on the time I've spent here, how fast it's going by and most importantly, how much I've learned from everybody who works at Onpoint. I've applied knowledge I've acquired to my every day life.  Elements of success that will help me become a better leader and a great marketer. Two of the key areas I'm focused on while studying at Endicott.


Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Endicott College
DJ

Gotta love Monday. Gotta love November

New day, new week. After a very exciting, and very weird halloween weekend, with snow and all. It's nice to be back at Esente, ready to go full throttle with the "Don't Stop Me" campaign we've been working on for the last few weeks.

Today was focused on lead collection and updating the blogs we have. It was a specially interesting time searching for articles to post on some of the blogs. Owing to the fact that Halloween weekend news and stories always have a "weird" side to them. As one story detailed how a woman was pulled over for driving under the influence while wearing a Hello Kitty suit with mask included.

I am very excited to share some ideas tomorrow that I've had in mind for the weekend, and see if they can add value to the project so we can launch in a months time.


Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Endicott College
DJ

Making progress on Don't Test Me

     I started the morning by collecting leads for OnPoint's Phoenix Division. I'm slowly getting faster at all of this data entry! After that, I posted an anti-bullying and an anti-drunk driving article to the Esente blog.

        Once that was taken care of, I switched my focus over to Don't Test Me. We continued to collect a list of websites and blogs that we can use to promote our crowdfunding campaign. Doing this all day wasn't exactly the most exciting work I've done at Esente, but it's going to be worth it once the website is up and running.

-Bijan Hennessey

Keep testing me

Today we spent a good portion of the day with lead collection. We moved away from analyzing websites for the "Focus 100" for a while. Instead we focused on the Phoenix & veteran owned businesses lists.

Things are going good with the “Don’t Test Me” project, we spent more time expanding the media list we created a few days ago. It’s been entertaining though also cumbersome due to the repetitive nature of the task. In the end, it’s a key element in the project that has to be dealt with in order to create and increase exposure of the project once it goes live.

It has been very interesting and educational working on this campaign. I’ve already learnt so much about crowd funding, the steps (as Ron calls it “playing chess backwards”) that lead to the final product, all the small pieces and details that make-up the entire project and media list creation.


I’m definitely excited to see this project be finalized and launched in a month's time. It's been a great learning process, brimmed with trail and error.

I'm proud to say I'm developing great working knowledge on the outline and schematics of creating a crowdfunding business/project.


Until next week,

Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Endicott College
DJ

Another Busy Day at Esente!

         I began my day by collecting leads for Onpoint's upcoming Phoenix branch. Though this has been a somewhat tedious task, doing it every morning has definitely improved my overall speed in data entry.

         After doing this for about two hours, I switched my focus over to Don't Test Me.

Our main goal for today was to collect a list of anti-animal testing groups and celebrities who may be willing to help promote our crowdfunding campaign. I don't think that many big names would be willing to post anything special about Don't Test Me, but we might be able to convince them to re-tweet us. Even if that does not work, there are still plenty of facebook groups that we could post links to our website and crowdfunding video. We're going to make our social media pages soon, so we'll see how these techniques go. 

-Bijan Hennessey

We Love our Dogs Here

Our most recent project is a very exciting one, and I'm glad to say we're making great progress on it.

It's called "Don't Test Me". For this project we are looking to create a dog book where we include the photos of 50 dogs, which owners are going to submit in order for us to put together and launch as part of a campaign looking to put and end to animal testing for non-essential products. 

Products in these category can range from the cosmetic industry to the perfume one. We are trying to raise awareness, in order for people to stop buying products from the companies that test on animals, and opt for the brand that doesn't  even if the price is higher than the company hurting our pets.

We have made great progress with the project. And as long as week keep pushing through, and tackle every task as efficiently as we have in the last two weeks, we are going to have a final product within the next month. 

I'm very excited to be involved at such depth in such an important project for the company, and can't wait to see the final product in a few weeks time.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez

Endicott College

DJ

Woof.

What a long week has just passed. Out with mysterious (non-Ebola-like) symptoms that are still being tested on (don't worry I'm not contagious...), I'm back to help shovel coal into our newest train car on the Sentient Express, Project Beagle. The project has huge potential to not only do extremely well for itself and if it does work out, taking what we know works and what doesn't we will be able to streamline our methods into producing future projects with the same rubric. Just in my first day back it seems as though there has already been a multitude of progress made in the creation of the idea. It'll be sad to put 1Loud Street on the back burner for a while, but I am ecstatic to see what kind of progress we can make on this new path.


Until next time...

Brenden Groom
Marketing & PR
Coal shoveler for the Sentient Express

On your marks, get set... GO!

It's Monday once again, and as always, excited to be back at Esente ready to tackle this weeks problems. Today was a very interesting day, the office was hectic (in a good way), it's great seeing everyone work together and collaborate when there's a task at hand that has to be tackled as a team.

I feel more and more comfortable as the days go by, and I start to have a more in depth understanding of how everything works at Esente, Onpoint and Target Marketing.

Today was a good day for leads, since I'm starting to collect leads faster, and more efficiently than when I started working here. In addition to leads, I am also gaining more experience when it comes to analyzing websites for the "Focus 100".

I have learnt a lot on website building, the do's & don'ts and the basic layout of one. After seeing numerous websites all day, it's exciting trying to find things that are missing, or that should be edited in order to make the page a more efficient one to generate business for the business owner.


Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Endicott College
DJ

"I Don't Want To Be Here..."

... Is what some people might say, but I am a believer in what is going on within the walls of Esente. Today was filled with the normal horse play in the conference room talking about music, politics, and ISIS of course. The highlights of the day though, were spent hammering out our version of the 1Loud Street Kickstarter video. Hopefully when we have our proposal ready for Ron it will be something fruitful to work with and not another step backwards. Other than that, I'm just hoping that all this sickness plaguing all of us flutters away soon and we can all breath easily again.

Until next time,

Brenden Groom
Sick and tired of being sick and tired...
Marketing & PR

One of our biggest accomplishments was expanding the reward tier for our crowdfunding video. This is what we have so far:

$1: Personalized email/thank you and/or listed on our donor page on 1Loud Street

$5: Bracelet (similar to livestrong, with one of our phrases/ 1Loud Street)

$25: T-Shirt and Bracelet

$50: Be on the Limited Digital Playlist with all other backers

$100: Backer gets listed on our Featured Artist Page

$200: Musician or band gets to be in a tutorial video

$500: Backer gets guest spot on “Band Rescue”

$750: Backer gets 3 personal one on one Skype sessions with industry expert, Ron

$1000: Backer gets studio sessions with Jayna Liniger and Ron

I think that these rewards will attract a lot of investors because of how different they are in comparison to the rewards offered by other Web projects on Kickstarter.

We also discussed possible ways to promote 1Loud Street offline. The reason for this is that Kickstarter deletes projects with links that have been posted too frequently. I believe that the best way to go about this is to team up with local music schools and give them and their spots on the 1Loud Street website in exchange for promotion.

-Bijan Hennessey

An Autonomous Day

Today was left a lot up to us. The 1Loud Street team had to come up with goals and objectives to move forward. We came up with a few critical goals. We discussed and brainstormed the concept for which our brand will be on the 1Loud Street merchandise given to backers. We also developed a tier system for those backers. In addition we further discussed how to use social media to drive traffic to the video after finding out that Kickstarter can shut down your project if you try to spam people. We must be very careful with that. Also we discussed some companies that we can use to get the merchandise from. We still have a few questions that we need answers to in order to further develop our goals but we made some good progress today.

Nick Sarno
Endicott College
Marketing Intern

Rewarding Experience

Another day down at Esesnte. Today we spent a majority of the time planning the Kickstarter in the form of how we are going to reward our backers and how we are going to spread awareness about it. Hopefully, we can put all of these ideas to use soon and get everything up and running within the next month. It will be amazing to start seeing all of our notes, brainstorming, and ideas come to fruition. I think we have some very capable people who are willing to put in the work to make this project come alive.

Until next time...


Brenden Groom
Marketing & PR