I’m now 3 months off the grad scheme and in my first permanent role as Assistant Brand Manager (ABM) on Trident and I definitely can’t complain about having a lack of exposure - I’m now in meetings with the big guns (our managing director, the head of Europe and their leadership team) explaining the performance and plans for Trident. Last week I presented to all 300 sales guys at our national sales conference and to my relief it seemed to go down pretty well so they’re convinced that we have some good plans for Trident next year and are ready to sell it in to our customers.
So what’s expected of an ABM? This is a question I posed to my mentor (who heads up our giving and seasonal team) and his response was that you should have a really good understanding of the brand, so this means knowing the sales data that comes in (how much are we selling? Which flavours are selling best? Why is that? Where are our products ‘in distribution’, i.e. how many stores are stocking them? Is there more of Trident in supermarkets or corner stores? How does this affect who’s buying it?etc.)
So any time our marketing director drops by my desk, I should know the answer to these and the more ‘consumer’ measures which include knowing what people think of our adverts, how many of them recognise the ad and know what brand it’s advertising, how many of them say we are one of their favourite brands, how many say they intend buying us and who is it that buys us – what age, buying behaviour and socio-economic class do they belong to? Knowing all this should give you a pretty clear picture of what you need to do with your brand… which is where it get’s really interesting….and unfortunately confidential so I can’t share with you how we’re planning on making Trident even bigger in the next year but suffice to say it’s pretty cool to think that I’m around when this brand is 18months old and in 50 years time people will have grown up with this brand and have the same love for it as they do for a Crunchie, or Twirl, Wispa or a bar of Dairy Milk.
Comments are forwarded to the author and those that we think will be useful to other readers will be posted on the site.