The Career Path for being a Marketing Head via Brand Management

BY ANUPRIYA SINGHAL

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It has been my long standing ambition to teach Marketing to B School students. I do believe that it’s only through teaching that one can leave a lineage. So needless to say I was more than eager to write this when Prof. Govindrajan asked me to.  Before I take you through the different career paths Marketing has to offer; let me tell you a little about myself. I am what one can call a “born & brought up FMCG child”. I have worked in the industry for over a decade with a career spanning sales & marketing, 5 FMCG companies, 7 categories spread over 21 countries. I currently handle Dettol Equity for Developing Markets in RB (Asia, Africa & LATAM) 

So here we go. I am going to detail out what a Brand Manager does and what is the career path if one chooses to walk down this road. Marketing has to be the most "Glamourized" job in a B-School. Continue to read this if you thought at least 3 things about marketing from the list below:

1. Marketing is all about making ads

2. You launch a product every now and then

3. You meet the big stars and it is a very glamorous place to be in

4. Kotler has taught us everything about marketing

5. Marketing starts and ends with 4 Ps

6. Marketing is about applying brains and thinking out of the box

7. Creativity is the key to being a successful marketer

8. It’s all about making pretty presentations

9. Numbers are a sales thing - and marketing is more surreal than that

10. Marketing is a superior function and the focal point of an organization

So it is now a true "reality bites" moment – marketing & most importantly brand management is not more than 10% about all of the above. 90% of your time, energy and efforts will not go into any of the listed things. 

As a typical Brand Manager you will start your career in Sales being an Area Sales Manager, where you will be given a territory with a sales target. These 2-3 years are the most important part of your career as a marketer. These 2 years give hands on knowledge about trade dynamics, as you will spend a lot of time covering retail outlets and wholesale channels. Besides, you will be managing distributors and other channel partners. Post your sales stint, you move on to become an Assistant Brand Manager (ABM). This is usually a 2-3 years long role. 

An ABM is who I like to call the “Brand Entrepreneur”. This person knows everything about the brand, category & competition before anyone else does. ABMs need to own the brand like it’s their own business. Key Skills needed for being a successful ABM are:

• Analytics on the brand:  A good ABM needs to accomplish the impossible task of synthesizing all information into hard numbers and bring innumerable data sources together to make a meaningful story. And it is not a one off thing - 50% of an ABM’s life goes into this. 

• Network Manager: Time is the only fixed variable in marketing. Time lost can never ever be made up for. Hence, ensuring all projects & jobs get delivered on time in full is critical to success. It is the ABM’s job to ensure every job has a network and then all networks are followed to the ‘T’ by every member of the cross functional team to ensure timely deliveries 

• Ability to be a sponge: Marketing is a learnt art. It is 99% learnt on the job and it has an almost standardized learning curve. If you are brilliant then you will cover the learning curve in 3 months lesser time and if not - you will learn it in 4 months more. But the key is to learn to be patient and being a sponge to learn everything that comes your way 

After 3 years of being the bottom of the pyramid; you become a Brand Manager and then a Sr. Brand Manager. The difference between the 2 is usually just experience, size & complexity of business that one handles. The responsibilities are otherwise exactly the same. As a Brand Manager you are responsible for everything that happens on the brand. You own the decisions and hence need to face the consequences of each one of them. The prize of market share gains & sales more than compensate for the toil & midnight oil you burn. Key Roles & responsibilities of a Brand Manager are:

1. Delivering the business: All business objectives are owned by the brand manager – Sales, Market Share, Penetration et al 

2. Annual & Monthly Plans: Planning is the key to business delivery and hence the annual and monthly plans determine how well the brand will do 

3. Media: As a brand manager your biggest investment is in media and you own the media plans for your brands. 

The next step on the ladder is a Category Manager role. A category manager handles an entire portfolio of brands or multiple segments for the same brand. E.g. a Soaps category manager in Unilever would have all Brand Managers on different soap brands reporting to him/her. On the other hand a Category Manager on Dettol will have Brand Managers on different segments of Dettol reporting to him/her. A Category Manager’s job is two-fold:

1. Developing the Category Managers of tomorrow: As you grow up in the system you realize 50% of your work is about people management & development. You are only as good as your team at this level 

2. Looking at the larger picture: While you do need to ensure your monthly sales are getting delivered; the key role you play as a Cat Man is to bring long term strategy and big picture to the table. You are the person responsible for ensuring that the brand/category is always future ready

After a couple of Category Manager roles; you reach the top of the marketing function – Marketing Head. This is where you are a business manager first and a marketer later. This is where 90% of your job is to take calls. The buck stops at you and the onus of all decisions rests only and only with you. This is when it gets lonely and yet exhilarating at the same time. 

So this is the 20 year marketing career that one can dream of. Usually across industries it sort of remains the same. The titles change and the timeline from one level to another changes but what does stay constant is that marketing is a passion and is only half science. The rest is gut and magic.