In early today to have an early morning coffee with a senior member of the consumer marketing team. It's hard to get time in his diary, so I really have to pack a lot into the half hour, with the main focus on his vision for some new products coming out next year. It's my role to convert this into what it will actually look like in stores.
This morning I'm doing store visits with one of the National Account Managers. We're a bit worried that they're not complying with the latest plans. Unfortunately our suspicions are correct, so we're back to the office to make some awkward phone calls and to work out whether to use a carrot or stick approach to rectify things.
At lunchtime I'm going for a swim as part of some rehab for my old man knees (despite the fact I'm only 24), which means getting back to the office a bit out of breath and smelling of chlorine.
This afternoon I'm working on our Easter strategy for next year, to be presented to the whole sales force in a few weeks. The data is only just in and its a real race against time to break it down, analyse it, work out what happened and why; and then try to take the learnings and turn into a comprehensive strategy. All this and everybody seems to be on summer holiday at the same time. It's also hard as we don't know what our competitors will be doing, so we have to make various assumptions for them as well.
End the day with a meeting about Easter, where we end up chatting about the differences between what one customer called "luxury versus chav luxury".
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