Country Stories

At IAESTE India LC Manipal we sent over 70 students on internships each summer to countries across the globe. Paid Technical Internships - is our USP and the experiences of these Outgoing Interns is important to market in order to maintain a strong pool of members.

​

Each year as the summer ends we would collect media and testimonials and then share these stories on our social media accounts to attract people to signup for our membership. This presented a few problems - after a great summer, the excitement would die down and people wouldn't take our testimonial collection seriously, they would write a few brief lines and send in a picture or two, if at all.

​

As Marketing Head, I decided to approach this task a little differently. We held an online Photo Contest throughout Social Media accounts. Asking both Outgoing (Indian Students interning abroad) & incoming (foreign students interning in India) trainees to submit their pictures during the summer itself, with a prize for the top 3 entries. I would then contact the ones sending good media and strike up a casual conversation with them, asking about their work, the places they've visited, and such. This approach helped build stories around the pictures and we ended up with over 500 images and short clips by the end of June.

​

I got down to sorting the media according to each country and making Instagram stores which were then called the Country Series.