MARKETING INTERN: Maggie Grosshans

As year two being an intern at Aurora Cooperative kicks off, the excitement and learning experiences sure didn’t come in at a slow start. After a week of filling our brains to full capacity with all things Aurora Coop, we jumped in to the real work with one of the most predominate events of the summer – the Owners’ Acres tours. I had helped with them the previous summer, so I knew what was about to come. The Owners’ Acres tours display the Owners’ Acres field to growers to exhibit Aurora Cooperative’s product knowledge, research, and analytics to help them make profitable decisions for their farm. As a marketing intern many meetings, phone calls, trips to the sign store, and endless elevator rides to the marketing cage and back are all conducted to make these events such successes.

As I have been working at Aurora Cooperative there are a few things I have picked up on. One being that if we’re putting on an event, it is going to be done exceptionally well, and we’re going to go above and beyond. The second thing being, if a grower is involved, you do everything you can to make their lives easier, regardless of how inconvenient it possibly is for yourself. These values are emulated at events we put on as a cooperative and especially showcase themselves at the Owners’ Acres tours. They are also great reminders for me to take away as I finish up my final year of college, and I am put into the real world.

Aside from helping with Owners’ Acres tours, I am most excited for my visits to aerial locations this summer. I was given the task of helping promote our aerial department through pictures, videos, employee biographies, and lastly customer testimonials. I will be traveling to seven different aerial locations across Nebraska and into Colorado, visiting with employees and customers. The aerial department is an important piece of our agronomy business and is a one-of-a-kind service to our owners. I am excited to take on the challenge of helping them expand their business and their name. I began this project this week by heading out west with our other marketing intern Amber Kohmetscher. We visited our locations in Grant, Nebraska and Wray, Colorado.

Our visit to Wray and Grant were far more than I expected. The guys were extremely friendly and were very open to showing us all that their aerial business had to offer. We were able to capture footage of them doing their daily activities and see actual planes come and go. We were even able to take a ride up in one and see firsthand what it is like and how they spray in Colorado. Aside from the media aspect of it, we were able to talk one-on-one with the pilots and crew about what their job is like. Stay tuned this summer to learn more about each of them as we will be featuring them on our blog. I feel very fortunate and thankful for this trip and the knowledge that I was able to take from it. I will definitely remember this one.