News The Power of the Pitch: Year 7 In-house Internship 10.06.2022

It was a very exciting end to the week for our Year 7 students who took time out from their usual academic timetable to focus on their In-house Internship. Effective collaboration was a theme for Thursday’s sessions with the introduction of ‘Kudos points’ for positive contributions around supporting, listening, empathising, communicating, informing and challenging one other. A workshop to develop successful interviewing techniques armed students with the skills to interview staff and teachers from across the school about their brunch habits, and was followed by more sessions on customer mapping, idea generation using ‘crazy eights’ brainstorming activities, decision filtering and assumption consideration. In the afternoon the students got into their teams to develop their prototypes and to polish off their presentations which they then tested out on their parents at a special after-school event. A fantastic turn-out of parents was universally impressed with the quality of the projects and parents were very generous in providing insightful business and marketing feedback and observations to the girls.

On Friday the teams reconvened to reflect on the feedback from parents and to learn those all important pitching skills to help them communicate their ideas and to persuade their audience. Students worked in pairs to finalise their research before coming back together with their teams to put the finishing touches to their presentations which they recorded to test out on each other. The Year 7s then made their ‘live’ presentations and a team from each form was selected to pitch to the CEO of Urban Pantry, Crystal Eisinger (Class 2008). The teams chosen to pitch were:

7AD: Clemmy, Beatriz, India and Fyllia who impressed Crystal with their ‘Grab & Co’ concept and office discounts for workers in Chiswick Business Park. Crystal was particularly wowed by their presentation and branding and is intending to ask her manager to move forward with the ideas straight away!

7GS: Janice, Camilla, Chloe and Ella impressed with their idea for setting up brand partnerships with, for instance, a decaf coffee company for ‘Decafternoon at Urban Pantry’ and Radio Lamingtons cakes. Crystal felt that they displayed a very good understanding of the brand values and had well-researched companies that would be a good fit.

7DN: Olivia, Zara, Talli and Sophie impressed with their ‘Work Packs’ idea and Crystal felt that she could use some of these ideas alongside ….

7HK: Eugenie, Victoria, Atheya and Maia who pitched to set up a Daily Loyalty Card and who Crystal felt had done some fantastic research on reward theory and she could see how she could use some of the ideas from these two groups to set up a Daily Lunch Loyalty Card that refreshes everyday.

7MR: Taleen, Anoushka, Shajaami and Lucine impressed with their pitch for Grab & Go quick eats with the introduction of cultural days and a free call and order ahead service. Crystal felt that they had really understood the importance of the daily specials.

There were so many fantastic ideas in all of the pitches that Crystal couldn’t select a winner but said how lucky she was to be an Old Dolphin and how the ideas from our students would inject new energy into her business. Of the In-house Internship project she said ‘It is an incredible way of nurturing the key qualities the students of today will need in their careers – entrepreneurship, communication skills, collaboration and creative thinking – and I hope that the project will continue for many years to come’.

The girls presented Crystal with flowers and thanked her profusely; we are very grateful and proud to have such a fantastic mentor among our Old Dolphins.