What do I do as a Brand Manager? 👩‍💻

if you're a business grad looking to join the consumer goods industry then the most popular and sought-after role you'll probably come across is brand manager when I was applying to join the consumer goods industry this was the

role that I kept coming across on all of these companies websites but I wasn't really sure what a brand manager actually does how to prepare for the interview and how to decide if this was a role I even wanted if I ever asked

someone what a brand manager actually does they would just tell me that every day is different which isn't really helpful when you're trying to decide whether you want the job or not so today's video is going to be what I wish I had when I was applying to join the

industry and hopefully you will also find this helpful I will first take you over what a brand manager does on paper um as in the job description and then I'll take you over a typical day in the

life of what I would do on an average day and show you some of the tasks that I would work on by the way if you're new here I'm Rabia and I worked as a brand manager at Proctor and Gamble and only

recently quit my job earlier this year you can see my previous video to know why I quit but for now let's get into the video a brand manager is essentially the guardian of a brand within a company

this usually tends to be within a certain geographical location um or for a certain cluster of products so for example you wouldn't be the brand manager for the Coca-Cola company but

you could be a brand manager for their brand Fanta within China the main job of a brand manager is to understand who is the consumer of their brand and then build the best possible products to

Delight that consumer practically this means that a brand maner manager manages all of the business and marketing strategies of a brand um making sure that they are delighting their consumer while also staying profitable so

basically they own the Brand's profit and loss so on the loss side they oversee where the brand is spending money for example on packaging R&D Supply advertising and on the profit

side they monitor how the brand is going to make that money back so this could be for example by creating products that are really good and Superior that consumers want to buy it could be by

having really good advertising and creating desire for those products it could be through pricing the products correctly so that you are still profitable and you're not making a loss and it could also be by creating growth

strategies so that you can get your products to as many consumers as possible is the brand manager role right for you well the answer is yes if you're looking for a role that gives you an equal split between the technical

business analysis and also the Creative Marketing side of things however if you're looking for a role that is only based around numbers and strategy then you might want to look into sales manager on the other side if you're

looking for a role that doesn't really deal much with the business side of things and is much more creative then you might be interested in looking at marketing manager brand manager role is an equal split between the two and which

is often why um you will find a brand manager often being taken to the path of senior leadership so you'll see them getting promoted to director VP category CEO and eventually CEO there are roughly

two different types of brand manager roles that you'll find in most companies which are going to be based on which geographical location you're going to be based on so for example if you're going to be based in Dubai or London Sydney

New York um Your Role is probably going to be a lot more strategic and if you're going to be based in a smaller City then your role is probably going to be a lot more tactical if you're based in one of the big cities then your role is going

to be a lot more strategic now in PNG we call this a design brand manager but of course the title is going to vary company to company this kind of brand manager mainly focuses on the bigger

long-term design of the brand so for example how do they see the brand evolving in the next 3 to 5 years and also what are the different goals that they would like this brand to achieve in

the next 3 to 5 years so this could be like goals in terms of profit or goals of how many cities they want the brand to be sold in or um how sustainably they

want the products of this brand to be made in the next 5 years the second type of brand manager is what we call in PNG a delivery brand manager now this manager takes the bigger strategic

vision for the brand and is responsible for executing or delivering it across the countries that they manage this is usually a much more Hands-On role and this manager is expected to become an

expert of their market so knowing everything like how does the consumer in that market shop to what does the distribution Network look like to what is the political landscape what are the

culture nuances that work with certain advertising and everything of the like I do want to add that there will always be overlaps and exceptions between these two rules depending on which city you're

based in and what company you work for for example I started with design in PNG but was later assigned a special end to endend roll which basically meant that I managed the Strategic design of my brand

and then also executed the delivery across my markets for this day in the life I'll take you over a typical day from this end to end roll so you can get a broad idea of the full range of tasks that I would work on I would usually

wake up around 6:00 a.m. and immediately

hit the gym and work out from 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. so that my workout for the day

7:00 a.m. so that my workout for the day is already out of the way first thing in the morning then 7:00 to 8:00 I would shower get ready for the day make my breakfast and then either drive to work or bring my breakfast to my work table

if I was working from home then at 8:00 a.m. I would log into my work laptop and

a.m. I would log into my work laptop and also be having my breakfast and coffee on the side and the first thing I would usually do is make a list of three to five most important things that I needed to get done for that day um this is also

the time that I would typically check for any urgent emails that I need to get back to or I would also maybe finish doing some work that I had from maybe the evening before like filling in an

agency briefing document or maybe working on a launch plan on average I started most days at 8:00 a.m. and uh

would usually work until around 7: to 8:00 p.m. so I roughly worked 8 to 12

8:00 p.m. so I roughly worked 8 to 12 hour days um but it really dependent on what season it was and how much work we had and what the deadlines were in that particular week so 9:00 a.m. the

official workday begins um I would usually have a one-on-one with my manager at this time um this happened once or twice a week and this is the time that you completely lead with your

manager who is most likely going to be the brand director and this is time that you lead with them and you can take them over um all the progress that you're making on the different projects you can also take them over any challenges that

maybe you're facing with any of your deliverables and you can also um ask them for help to remove any barriers because it's their job to make your job easier by the way Pro tip on this um try

to send out an email as a to see to your manager a day before with the agenda for this uh meeting um this is going to help your manager know exactly what to expect coming into the meeting and they'll also

probably come already with next steps of what you guys want to discuss and it's also a great checklist that you can use during the meeting to make sure that you don't miss out on any important points um and you make sure that you align on

everything that's important then 10: to 11:00 a.m. you might have a meeting with

11:00 a.m. you might have a meeting with the global HQ team and they might want to take you over a super secret product that they've been working on that they want you guys to know about this is just a madeup example but let's say that you

are a brand manager at PNG for Gillette and in this head office meeting they tell you that R&D has been developing new kinds of blades for the razors which are five times more gentle on the skin

um let's call this new product razor gentle skin Pro yes an ironically unoriginal name coming from an xbm but let's say that they tell you about this new razor that they're working on so

usually they will uh deploy the entire deck to you about this this razor and they would ask you to create a report for them um talking about how you think this razor would perform in your markets as the brand manager of Gillette it's

going to be your responsibility to get all of the different cross functional teams together um to work on this report for razor gentle skin Pro and um your brand director might also join the

meeting but it's absolutely going to be your ownership and it's your job to make sure that this report is created then 11:00 a.m. to 1: p.m. you might decide

11:00 a.m. to 1: p.m. you might decide that you already want to get all of the cross functional teams together to get their initial thoughts on what you guys just saw from the head office so in this meeting you're going to have first of

all your consumer insights team these guys are basically the experts on all things consumer they have all the knowledge and information and reports about what consumers in your region are

looking for and how they behave so maybe they'll already be able to tell you how they think this razor is going to be received in the market or maybe they'll tell you that listen we don't have enough information about this right now

but we can carry out a consumer study um to learn more about this another team in this meeting is the msnp or the market sales and planning team these guys are basically the experts on the channels

through which you should sell your product so maybe in this case they'll tell you this razor sounds like a very specialized and premium product um it's supposed to be targeting only very

special kind of sensitive skin so actually we shouldn't really launch it through everyday grocery stores and instead we should focus on pharmacies and maybe online retailers and maybe

only big department stores finally you also have the finance team in this meeting I think this is probably the most obvious um these guys are basically going to help you build your entire business plan so they're going to help

you with your Revenue projections profit projections um help you analyze any risks that you could face um when it comes to things that could hurt the sales of this new razor it'll actually help you dive quite deep into the

numbers and this is actually an exercise that you're going to do with them later on but basically to help you make the financial models which can then show you how much money you're expecting to make

um by City And even by retailer so the regional team meeting is basically all of these experts coming together to share their first thoughts on this new product and you guys will basically discuss the next steps um on the work to

be done then 1: to 2:00 p.m. is usually

lunch time now maybe two times a week if you're working from the office all of the team is going to have lunch together but maybe three times a week um everyone's going to decide that they're very busy and there's a lot of work that

they need to catch up on so everyone will get lunch from the office cafeteria and have it at their desk while they catch up on the work so in the first half of the day before lunch I had all

of my main design meetings now after lunch from 2: p.m. onwards I might now have my main delivery meetings so from 2: to 3:00 p.m. I might have my first big delivery meeting which would be with

my distributor a small side note here for those that might not know um in most of these big consumer goods companies um the company only focuses on developing

and producing the product and then they sell this product to the distributor the distributor then sells it to different retailers like Amazon or Tesco or

Walmart and then those retailers sell it to the consumer so it goes from the company to the distributor to the retailer and then finally to the consumer so in my meeting with the

Distributors we would basically catch up on whether the monthly distribution targets are on track if they're facing any challenges with any retailers or products and just generally making sure that everything in the supply chain is

working then 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. I would

have a meeting with my PR and media agency with the media agency we would look at the media content calendar and see the campaigns that have already finished and see what worked what didn't

and see if there are any other learnings that we can take from them for future campaigns and then we would also look at what are the campaigns that are coming up if there are any images or videos that the agency is going to need from

our side which they're going to use in these camp campaigns and generally just make sure that everything is going on track with the media campaigns similarly with the pr agency we would look at all the plans and make sure that everything

is going on track um also sometimes we'd see maybe there are influencers that we want to work with or maybe there are events that we want to sponsor or maybe companies that we want to collaborate

with so we would look at all of that and make sure everything is on track with both the agencies we would also look at the budgets and see if there was any underspend that was done in any of the previous campaigns so we can take that

money and reallocate it to Future campaigns then finally from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. I would have my most important most

p.m. I would have my most important most stressful and probably most rewarding meeting of all budgets if there is one thing that is the most important part of

being a brand manager it is probably the budgets so managing the budgets making sure that you know where all of the money for the year is going to be spent and making sure that you are not

overspending this meeting is usually with the finance team but you could also just block the time in your calendar and even do this exercise yourself where you look at your Excel files which are your

budget files and basically go through them in meticulous detail and make sure that you understand where every single dollar is coming in and where every single dollar is being spent you also

use this time to update your budget files for example you now know that there's a new product coming out called gentle skin Pro so you can start planning for this in your budgets you can also start thinking about any media

events and PR that you would do around this and you can also then budget that in now let's say you're having a really good day so your meetings for the day have finally ended and you can now actually get to the real work so from

5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. is the time that

5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. is the time that you can use to then catch up on your real work so you're probably going to have a backlog of a lot of emails that you weren't able to check throughout the day so you would reply to those and you

can also get started on any brainstorming that you need to do for the new launch or get started on the reports that were requested you might also be working on presentations for your Distributors to to show them the

top secret and exciting new products that are coming into the market soon and yeah that's a day in the life for you um of course not all of these meetings are going to happen every day um some days you're probably going to focus on the

products that are already in the market and maybe other days you're going to focus more on the launch plans and products that are going to be launched soon it really depends on where you're based and what your scope looks like

there are also a lot of reports and presentations we make for our VPS and Senior directors um to show them our plans and get their alignment but these happen less frequently so every day

really is different to summarize in a nutshell your day-to-day work is basically being a business owner and bringing all the different experts together to help you deliver goals for your business if I were to summarize a

day in the life I would say that it is probably 70% meetings and 30% working on brand plans budget files and reports I hope this video was useful and gave you

a glimpse into a day in the life of a brand manager if you have any questions let me know in the comments and I'll see you in my next video [Music]