By Megan Gignac
This week at my internship at Innova DDB, I was assigned to work with the media buying team called P2P. They are a smaller company, about 7 people, under the big parent company of Innova. Luckily, I have some media planning experience thanks to Senyo, whose media planning class I took last school year. I was a little nervous about joining a new team, as I had gotten comfortable with the creative team I was with for the two weeks prior.
All those nerves went out the window as soon as I was able to spend just an hour with the media team. I quickly came to realize that the P2P team had energy!! They love listening to music on the speaker, singing along, dancing in their seats, and asking me a million questions about myself and where I am from. We had a lot of conversations about where they are from, explaining to me what tribes their families are from, teaching me their language, Pidgin, telling me what local foods they want me to try and how to eat it properly (such as with my hands) so I don’t embarrass myself in front of other Ghanaians, and asking me questions about where I am from and comparing and contrasting cultural differences.
They asked me mundane things such as what the scope of advertising looks like in the US, or what buying in bulk means after I told them about Costco (lol). We also had more impactful conversations, such as what my opinions on American politics are. I knew I would get this question a lot from Ghanaians, and I was prepared. I knew that Ghanaian culture was more conservative and I also recognized that my coworkers were asking me questions purely based on their own curiosity. I welcomed each question, answered them honestly and thoughtfully, and we had really thoughtful discourse over a plethora of topics regarding politics and beliefs.
I honestly found it refreshing—there were no disagreements or arguments over opinion, we were just teaching each other new things we didn’t have prior knowledge on. One conversation that particularly stuck out was when I was explaining to Kojo how climate change justice was a big thing for many people in the States. There are multiple US companies that have CSR initiatives that reflect environmental sustainability. He then explained to me that environmental conservation is not a prevalent conversation in Ghana. Many Ghanaians do not put much focus on climate justice because there are other issues in Ghana that are more immediate to their everyday life. Although I was shocked to hear that it was not really on their radar at all, I realized that issues that may feel like the most important in one country will not be the same in another.
Following those conversations later in the workday after lunch, Kojo showed me his favorite African artists and gave me suggestions on what artists I should listen to. Then, he and my other coworkers asked me to share the kind of music I listen to…which is literally my worst nightmare.
I hate being on aux at home, let alone being on aux in a foreign country and showing my musically well-versed new friends my music— the pressure was on. I froze, not even sure what genre to start with. I had to get this right and play the perfect song, the only problem was I couldn’t think of anything. My mind was blank. So, after they encouraged me to connect to the speaker and mirror my laptop to the TV, I pressed shuffle on my music, not being able to make up my mind and a song started to play: “Nine Ball” by Zach Bryan.
Oh no. What a stereotypical American move of me to show them country music. I shook my head, thinking I failed my mission to impress my coworkers. Next thing I knew, Kojo and Phillip stand up and start dancing and clapping along. “AYYYEEE OKAYYYY,” they cheer. Then the rest of the office joins in one by one, clapping along and moving their feet to my silly American “country” song. Finally, I joined in, realizing I was missing out on the dance party.
I’ve learned a lot at my internship from so many different sectors of advertising that I will take with me into my professional life upon returning home, but I have to say; it’s memories and conversations such as these that I will cherish the deepest. Sometimes the smaller moments, sharing culture, dancing together, learning new things, and connecting as humans, that mean the most.