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mia verdoorn

Marketing Internships – South Africa, Mia Verdoorn (Part 2)

Summer 2010, student Mia Verdoorn interned in her native country, South Africa. She spent June at Sony Music and July with Warner Music Gallo Africa.

You can read Part 1 here.

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Throughout my time at both major companies, heavy emphasis was placed on the promotional side of the industry, which was very interesting to me as I had yet to take some of the marketing classes required for the business major at Berklee.

During my time at Warner Music Gallo Africa, I was busy with a lot of work for the Digital Promotions Department, which included press releases for the Warner Music Gallo Africa web-site. Some of these releases included:

•            Avenged Sevenfold

•            Disturbed

•            Billy Talent

•            The Baseballs

•            Tony Allen

•            Step Up 3D Soundtrack

I also had to compile an 80-word CD review for the new B.o.B Presents: The Adverntures of Bobby Ray album, which is now used in the in-flight magazine of one of our local airlines, 1Time.  I was privileged enough to meet the legendary trumpet player, Hugh Masekela, at one of his last recording sessions for his new album. The head A&R representative at Gallo invited me to go with him to sit in and listen to mastery at work. It was amazing! I tried my best  to be invisible in order to not get in the way. “Bra Hugh” as they call him here in South Africa, took an immediate interest when he heard that I was a student at Berklee and told me that he was going to Berklee to do a show in October 2010.

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Marketing Internships – South Africa, Mia Verdoorn (Part 1)

Summer 2010, student Mia Verdoorn interned in her native country, South Africa. She spent June at Sony Music and July with Warner Music Gallo Africa.

________________________________

Throughout my time at both major companies, heavy emphasis was placed on the promotional side of the industry, which was very interesting to me as I had yet to take some of the marketing classes required for the business major at Berklee.

For the month of June, I interned at Sony Music under Spiro Damaskinos, Director of International Artists’ Relations and Marketing. Tasks I completed for him included voiceover scripts for the “Sex And The City 2” motion picture soundtrack’s video trailer clip, as well as the clip for Jennifer Rush’s new album trailer. Both aired on all major South African television channels during Summer 2010. I also completed the label copy for a compilation album called “Now 55”.

Part of my internship included driving around with other Sony employees as they delivered music video masters to broadcasting houses (such as Red Pepper, Urban Brew, Channel O (Mnet), MTV Base). Being that this was the summer of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, we also dropped off new World Cup albums. “Listen Up” was the official FIFA World Cup album. “Hello Africa” was a double-disc compilation album that many African artists are on. We brought this to the main magazine printing publishers. I was able to sit in on many of the weekly FIFA meetings (Sony was one of FIFA’s main partners) and it was interesting to hear about all the plans for Shakira, Alicia Keys and R.Kelly’s arrival before the soccer kick-off concert in Johannesburg.

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