Name: Danny Breslauer

Internship Company: NBCUniversal

Role: TV Everywhere Audience Development MBA Intern

What did you do before Stern?
I was a radio, television and OTT play-by-play sports broadcaster. In addition to being the voice of a dozen sports on Rutgers University Athletics’ RVision service, I was IMG’s lead radio announcer for Rutgers women’s basketball. I worked on a freelance basis for Rutgers, IMG, Greater Media, Verizon FiOS1 Sports and the Northeast Conference in play-by-play, analysis and hosting roles, while advising media and athletics executives on content strategy.

What was your role over the summer?
I worked in NBCUniversal’s Content Distribution team within the TV Everywhere group. I sat between the consumer marketing and product teams and served as an insights liaison between the two and our external digital marketing and creative agencies. On a daily basis, I reported to the Director of Audience Development, whose job it was to optimize marketing tactics and budget allocation for seven NBCUniversal brands (i.e. USA, Bravo, etc.) that had been pre-selected for campaign activations based on the previous year’s data and metrics.

What were your responsibilities?
My job was to update and manage data analytics findings and product roadmaps in order to build out campaign reveal decks to present to the executives of the seven brands. This involved talking to various team leads in order to craft the proper narrative based on the data at hand and deadlines for marketing spend and product launches. Additionally, I ran point on the relationship with our digital marketing agency, to ensure that they had all the necessary information about our intentions for the campaigns. This made our weekly status meetings much more efficient.

What was a typical day like?
Every day was different, depending on which regular meetings were on the schedule for that day of the week, but I can sketch out what an aggregation of those days looks like:

8:45am – Arrive at NBCUniversal offices on 49th Street / 6th Ave. Check email from overnight and review Outlook for the day. Grab coffee and settle into project checklists until about 10am (most team members arrived between 9:15am-9:45am).

10:00am – Conference Calls – these often involved the product team giving updates on app launch roadmaps for various devices. I helped manage some partner marketing accounts too, maintaining the relationship with contacts at Google, Apple, Roku and Amazon.

11:00am – Check in with my direct report to see if he has any pressing needs, hear about his one-on-one with the VP and get feedback on the previous day’s meetings.

11:30am – I would almost always call the Manager of Analytics for the TVE group, who happened to be a part-time Stern MBA! Josh and I would chat about data dashboards that I needed to put together for the various NBCU networks and he would pull the data we discussed. We would decide which insights to present to the director and VP.

12:30pm – Lunch

1:30pm – This was the best time to get work done. I would work on decks, dashboards and emails.

3:00pm – Joint Status meetings with research, digital marketing agency and creative agency

4:00pm – Informational interviews around the company were encouraged once or twice a week, and 4pm was often a good slot, depending on the day.

5:00pm – VP would send her end-of-day requests for data, decks and roadmaps and I would spend the rest of the day making the changes, adding insights and executing the necessary calls/emails along the chain of command.

6:15pm – Send my director a day recap email, file any projects and leave NBCUniversal by 6:30pm.

What drew you to this company and role?
I had targeted the TV Everywhere group from the get-go, because I am very interested in the changing model of television. I wanted to understand the KPIs and marketing strategy differences between linear TV, TVE, SVOD and OTT services. NBCUniversal is seen as one of the industry standards for content and cable entertainment. That, along with a very generous MBA2, led me to my Summer 2016 role.

What experiences (if any) helped prepare you for this internship?
My preexisting knowledge of the broadcast media space helped a lot in my onboarding, but my spring internship at Wasserman helped prepare me for the summer. I worked with a great manager at Wasserman, who pushed me to reach out to multiple groups for projects. That mindset allowed me to contribute to both the marketing and product teams within the NBCUniversal TVE group.

What was the best advice you received during the recruiting process?
Leverage the Stern network every day and stay calm. Generally, I am not a calm human being. I’m intense (in a good way). With that said, you have to harness your emotions during this recruiting process. It will go at a snail’s pace and then happen all at once in 48 hours. It’s wild. If you keep working your Stern connections – from MBA2s to professors to the alumni, you’ll end up with a great position.

How did you spend your time preparing for recruiting and interviews?
The best way to prepare for interviews is by reading the industry’s trades. Sign up for the Cynopsis Media newsletter… it’s a great way to start your day. As for recruiting, have a routine. Go the gym, read a book, watch a game, whatever centers you. You’re going to need it to stay sane.

Did you find anything surprising during recruiting or the internship?
I was stunned by how quickly the process moved from interview invite to interview to offer to acceptance.

What was your most memorable experience over the summer?
While we had a few fire drills to pull off the campaign reveal decks, a cool out-of-office experience was the Content Distribution boat cruise around NYC. You can call it a nice perk of a big company internship.

What do you look forward to as an MBA2?
I’m excited to step out of my comfort zone and take a class or two that aren’t in my wheelhouse (i.e. Financial Modeling, Tech Product Management). Nobody wants this two-year journey to end, but I’m also excited to officially get into the business side of media. It has been a long time coming, and I’m ready to roll into full-time recruiting.