Whether you have kids of your own or not, you probably already know it’s that time of the year again: Back to School!! This also means our summer internship program here at the agency has come to an end.

I have to say that once again, our interns never fail to impress me. Our internship program is unlike any other program out there today. We had more than 300 applicants compete for less than 25 spots in this year’s program. So needless to say, our interns represent the best of the best.

Our internship program isn’t about making copies and coffee runs. It’s about working five days a week doing real work in a real agency. Our interns cycle through every single department – media planning and buying, strategy, account services, creative, traffic, studio and more – giving them the opportunity to get hands-on experience and cross training in each area until they find the one they are best suited for.

As if that weren’t enough to keep them busy, our interns our broken down into teams of five and assigned a campaign for one of our clients. This year’s assignment was to activate PartyCity.com. Who better to do that than a group of students?! So during their free time at nights and on the weekends, our interns were hard at work putting together a campaign for Party City. This project gives students a chance to use their practical Zimmerman experience to develop campaigns for real-life clients.

Like all of our partners, Party City is a phenomenal company made up of phenomenal people. Lisa Laube, President of Party City, and Mike Heller, EVP of Retail Operations for Party City’s parent company Amscan Holdings, actually flew in to help judge the final presentations along with a team of my executives. And let me tell you, these interns knocked our socks off with their presentations!! It wasn’t easy to narrow it down to just one winner, but in the end, we had to. Party City is psyched to start incorporating ideas from all the presentations into their future marketing and advertising plans. Stay tuned for more to come on this front.

As if that weren’t exciting enough, we made another exciting announcement. At Zimmerman, we believe performance should be rewarded in a BIG way. Unbeknownst to our interns, they were being judged throughout the summer on a variety of criteria. Byron Oldham, a senior at University of Florida, came in first place. Zimmerman will now pay for every credit hour in every class he receives an ‘A’ in during his senior year. In addition, he is guaranteed a job here when he graduates. Our second and third place finishers will also be guaranteed jobs when they graduate. Congratulations to Erica Novak from University of South Florida and Olga Dziubina from Digital Media Arts College. In today’s tough economic times, it’s a huge relief for these students to know they have a great company like Zimmerman to work for when they graduate.

I couldn’t be more proud of our internship program or our recent ‘graduates.’ I am happy to be able to offer Byron, Erica and Olga these kinds of opportunities. And I am proud to have these young entrepreneurs come work for us. Congratulations to every one of our interns – you’re all awesome. I look forward to seeing big things from you in the future!!