Behind the scenes of the incredibly long drive-through lines and the lunch rush at the north Mount Pleasant Chick-fil-A, senior Riley Carbon diligently works as the social media manager. Constantly brainstorming ideas on how to successfully market the Chick-fil-A in his area, Carbon spends his time posting reels on Instagram and finding ways to get the community involved.
“The marketing side of it kind of caught my eye… I saw the job and I thought it’d be really fun…I mean I have been on social media basically my whole life and I’ve been on almost every platform, so it just made sense,” Carbon said.
Carbon’s job requires a lot of creativity and brainstorming so that he can promote the restaurant to the best of his abilities.
“It’s a good deal of idea generation and reels,” Carbon said. “It’s a lot of thinking like ‘what are other companies doing?’, ‘what are things that they aren’t doing?’, ‘what are things that I see my peers connecting with?’, ‘what are some trends that I see that are pretty funny, and also ideas that I can take, reinvent and then connect it back to what I do for a living.”
Carbon faces challenges when it comes to taking ideas and turning them into actual content.
“Trying to execute the ideas is one [of the biggest challenges]. We’d have a lot of ideas and then we try and put them into place and it would just take too long, so I think time management is the real big issue,” Carbon said.
Getting this internship was something Carbon did through the Lighthouse Keepers program at the East Cooper Center for Advanced Studies. He was given this opportunity to try out a new experience and use his current knowledge of the marketing business while also learning more in the process.
“They contacted Mr. [Kevin] Sneed [a teacher at the CAS] saying that a position was open for social media management and Mr. Sneed told us about it so we all applied and they narrowed it down and I got the job,” Carbon said.
While being a teacher at the ECCAS, Kevin Sneed is also the Lighthouse Keeper leader. He organizes different opportunities to select students to teach them leadership skills.
“I’d say it’s like AP Academy meets Warrior Ambassador… [for the internships] we wanted to reward these kids for going above and beyond. So I told our guidance here at the CAS ‘I’d love it if we could work this into a credit,’ so it’s an internship that is worth a half credit,” Sneed said.
The Lighthouse Keepers have been working with Chick-fil-A throughout the whole year.
“Chick-fil-A came to us one day about having a leader academy here [which] is essentially a leadership program where they go through the qualities and principles of a good leader,” Sneed said.
Sneed expresses his feelings towards the Lighthouse Keepers and wants other students to take part in this program.
“If you’re a student who wants to do more than just the typical classroom environment and get out and get back to the community, then the lighthouse keeper program is something you should think about,” Sneed said. “It’s also dedicated to our kids who are completing programs here at the CAS. So each one of them represents everything from cosmetology, automotive, biomed engineering, and we’ve really got a grouping of just about every single program.”
During his time at Chick-fil-A, Carbon has experienced new and unique opportunities and expressed his gratitude for his involvement in the marketing process.
“Being able to connect with my co-workers in a different way is really fun. Just going back there and seeing everyone roll their eyes when I pull out my phone and you just get to connect with those people,” Carbon said.