At Shenton Group, we’re passionate about supporting young people as they explore future career opportunities. Work experience provides a valuable opportunity to gain practical insight into the workplace and develop skills that can’t always be learned in the classroom. It also allows students to explore different career paths and gain a better understanding of the day-to-day realities of a professional environment.
From the 22nd to the 26th of June 2026, we welcomed Year 10 student Zenia C to our marketing team for her placement week, giving her the chance to learn more about branding, social media, content creation, and graphic design.
Let’s see how she found her week in marketing.
We were told ahead of time that Zenia has a keen interest and passion for art and graphic design, so we wanted to tailor her placement to provide hands-on experience across a range of creative marketing activities. Her first day focused on understanding the fundamentals of marketing, learning about Shenton Group’s brand identity, and putting her graphic design skills into practice through a poster design task.
I was quite nervous before starting the week, not sure what to expect in an office environment, but everyone was very welcoming and nice, which made me comfortable working there. First, Lindsay (Brand Co-ordinator) taught me about the company’s clients and about marketing. My first activity was to make a poster using the brand guidelines to help me, and I thought it was interesting, as before that day I didn’t know what a brand guideline was. I tried my best to make the poster, and I’m happy to say I think I did quite well. After lunch, I went on Shenton Group’s LinkedIn and found some posts I liked, put them in a PowerPoint and said what I liked about them, and that concluded my first day of work experience!
Social media plays an important role in modern marketing by helping businesses communicate with their audience, share expertise, and build brand awareness. As a B2B business, LinkedIn is our primary social site, but it’s not exactly a social site the average 16-year-old has much experience with.
To help develop her understanding of social content, and before creating any of her own, Zenia reviewed the LinkedIn posts of competing brands, analysing what elements worked, what could be better, and which posts she found particularly eye-catching or interesting.
After a social-heavy morning, it was back to graphic design in the afternoon. Zenia had to utilise what she had learnt in the morning to create a poster and a carousel for a mock event. To give her the most realistic experience possible, we planned her tasks around genuine activities and events that we would be doing in the marketing department.
On my second day, I started by finding two competing companies’ LinkedIn posts and comparing them. This helped me recognise what to put in a post to catch the audience’s attention and appeal to them. Then I made one carousel post and a single post promoting an event. I was quite happy with the results.
Effective marketing relies on more than strong visuals; no matter how impactful a graphic may be, clear and engaging written content is just as important.
On day three, Zenia was introduced to copywriting and content creation, where she was tasked with composing LinkedIn post copy, writing an event summary blog, and creating an infographic, where she had to translate some slightly more technical jargon into easy-to-understand language.
Zenia was introduced to the importance of audience-focused communication. Each task encouraged her to think about who would be reading the piece, how information is presented, and how different audiences engage with content.
On my third day here, I wrote the captions that went with the posts I created, and I tried to make them more interesting with emojis and not make them too long. Later, I wrote a blog about the event as if it had happened already, so I had to use a bit of creativity to write it. I don’t normally get the opportunity to write blogs in school, and I would be interested in working in marketing later in life, so I think this was helpful to me. After that, I made an infographic comparing generators and UPS. I wasn’t sure how to lay everything out, but I did it after doing a bit of research on them.
By day four, Zenia had already completed several creative projects, but this day was all about helping her develop her design skills through infographics and visual communication tasks.
As with many real-world marketing projects, the focus wasn’t simply on creating something aesthetically appealing, but on finding the clearest and most effective way to communicate the intended message.
Like many designers, she discovered that the best ideas don’t always come together on the first attempt, and that refining a design and getting feedback from others can lead to a much stronger final piece.
On Thursday, I started making an infographic with more symbols and icons with some data given to me about numbers behind backup power. When I first made it, I wasn’t quite happy with the results, so Nicole (Brand Manager) helped me by telling me what she does when she makes a graphic design. Therefore, I made another infographic, but in landscape, and this time I was very happy with my results as it looked a lot neater and easier to read. Then I ended my day by making another poster, but for what to do when there’s a power cut. I made it with the brand guidelines and using the company colours and icons for each step. I also started to make my portfolio showcasing everything I’ve done this week.
The final day of her placement gave Zenia the opportunity to sink her teeth into another creative project and to reflect on everything she had learned throughout the week, putting her experience into a blog that you are reading now! It also gave her a chance to review the work she had produced and add any of it to her portfolio.
Having been introduced to a range of marketing activities, from graphic design and branding to blog writing and social media, Zenia finished her work experience week with a much broader understanding of the profession, the skills needed, and what a career in marketing could look like. We also saw her confidence grow over the days as well, when talking about her work, and it was very rewarding to see.
Overall, I really enjoyed my week. I felt like I learnt a lot about marketing. I’m now considering this to be a career path of mine, and I think this week helped me develop my graphic design skills. Everyone was really helpful and nice that made me really excited to come back every day. The office environment is also really relaxing and calm, so it helped me work better and focus a lot more easily. I managed to get through my tasks quite quickly and do them well. I am really grateful for this week, as I was able to experience what working in an office would be like, and it helped me get an insight into what marketing does.
After a week with the Shenton Group marketing team, Zenia now has a much broader understanding of branding, design, social media and content creation. Throughout the placement, she completed a range of creative projects and began building a professional portfolio that she can continue to develop in the future.
We’d like to thank Zenia for all her hard work during the week and wish her every success in her future studies and career.
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