Maringá, BRAZIL – I worked for a robot for eight months.
You probably think this is a fictional story, but it’s not!
At the beginning of this year, I joined a tight, selective process to get an internship at DB1 Group, a mid-tech company here in Maringá.
I was applying to work as a communication intern at Tinbot Robótica, a startup that creates robots inside DB1.
It was my first internship outside my university, and honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. So when the manager asked me if recording funny and silly videos for me was okay, I was very surprised.
After the company hired me, I connected the dots.
My mission there was to create entertaining videos for social media using their star: a robot called Tinbot.
Tinbot was created in 2016 as part of a hack town challenge. Initially, the idea was to keep it at only DB1, to interact with the coworkers. But over time, they improved it and launched it on the market.
In 2020, the robot went viral on TikTok, and became famous across the country. He even appeared on an episode of Shark Tank Brazil and in one edition of Forbes magazine!
After the pandemic, the engineer who created Tinbot left the company to live in England. Without him, they stopped creating regular content for the robot’s social media, decreasing the number of his followers and likes.
That is the reason they hired me: to fortify their online presence and attract more engagement.
As someone who had never done anything like this, I was very nervous. I’ve never worked as a marketing analyst before, even with robots. And I am pretty sure most of my fellow Brazilians don’t have this experience, either.
But I was lucky. My team was very helpful and willing to teach me everything about the robot, and also to give me some tips on social media, even though they were all programmers.
On Instagram, Tinbot had only 11,000 followers, but after a couple of months, he boosted to almost 50,000 followers!
I was the only girl in the room, but I never felt uncomfortable. Everyone was pretty young and nice. They always treated me with respect and never undervalued my gender.
We laugh at anything. It seriously seemed like I was among cousins.
On a regular day, there are lots of visitors to the company, and when they see our lab with many robots, they get enchanted.
Children went crazily happy when Tinbot danced for them and it was nice to see how technology transformed their lives.
But, working with social media is very stressful, especially when you’re the only one doing it.
You have to be online all the time; from being updated about the latest trends, to learning the best strategies to reach more people and effectively engage with your public.
Also, as a solo intern in marketing, I was responsible for everything; brainstorming ideas, planning posts, writing, recording, editing, publishing, and then, analyzing their performance.
Before this experience, I thought that an influencer’s life was easy. Now, I realize that it isn’t. We only see the videos and all this content that is produced, but we don’t have any idea how it is produced or how much effort influencers put on it. Although it’s all hidden, I can sense the stress of what’s going on backstage.
Even a three-second video posted on TikTok requires a lot of preparation. It’s not about duration, but what methods can attract more people and give you fruitful results.
The best part of working as a social media for a robot was when I had to record some videos.
I walked all around the company holding Tinbot and a camera. Everyone looked at me confused and laughing.
This year, my classmates and I had to produce a short movie for my Cinema class at university. We decided to run a comedy story about a robot that becomes alive and starts chasing his young doctor called Vic.
The fact that I worked with a robot made our lives way easier.
We spent three days recording our movie at my workplace after office hours, and despite it being very challenging, it was hilarious!
The best clip was when the robot invades the elevator. There, Doctor Vic tries to run away from Tinbot, when the robot suddenly gets behind her on the elevator and aggressively raises his hand to dance.
Yeah, and they start dancing instead of fighting!
In an entertaining way, our movie entertainingly tried to criticize the paranoia that robots are dominating the world.
We took around one hour to make this short elevator clip because other people kept pressing the button to call the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, we’d be off to another level where someone was waiting to use the elevator.
There was a moment when I was lying down on the mat raising the robot behind my colleague when the door opened and a woman tried to come in. When she saw the situation, she laughed out loud.
Honestly, creating a robot is very hard and requires a lot of teamwork. So does making videos for social media. So please, value your Alexa and short videos on TikTok, cause they probably took a lot of research and stress!
For a prospective journalist, the experience of working in the marketing field with a robot was undoubtedly unique.
I don’t see myself on it anymore, but enjoyed the time I spent there, and strongly recommend having a robot as a boss – especially if it dances the Macarena.
Nicole Luna is a Correspondent with Youth Journalism International.
