Making the Leap: Do You Have What It Takes for Brand Management?

by , Dec 10, 2010

Guest Post by Way Lum from ZoomInterviews. Learn more about ZoomInterviews by clicking here.

There is something about a powerful brand that is inherently alluring for the consumer. Coca-Cola, Nike, Hershey, BMW, Louis Vuitton all are globally recognized brand names that evoke strong emotions and imagery around their products. Each of these brands and the products they offer are driven by strong marketing engines that work to grow sales and capture market share. And for many brands, top MBA talent helps make these marketing engines hum.

For students looking to become career marketers or general managers, there are few opportunities that provide the content-rich experience of running your own business like brand management. Brand managers are responsible for all aspects of driving their product or portfolio of products, from developing the vision for the brand to managing the daily execution of that brands marketing strategy.

Global consumer product companies offer MBAs highly attractive marketing opportunities, but are as equally demanding about who they hire to work on their world-class brands. MBA students looking to get into brand management need to display not only the requisite leadership, team work, creativity, problem-solving and analytical skills, but also the deep passion and energy for the brands they will ultimately be promoting to the world. For the aspiring marketer, the question is, of course - can they make the leap?

Take Stock of Your Pre-MBA Work Experience

As the vast majority of MBA students are career switchers, the good news is that most consumer product companies are open to a range of diverse pre-MBA experiences, all of which can be valuable for brand management. MBA students hailing from backgrounds in investment banking, consulting, operations, and even airline pilot, for example, have all made the leap into brand management at marquee companies. However, youll likely need prior marketing experience to effectively compete for the coveted marketing internships at major consumer package goods (CPG) companies such as Kraft, PepsiCo or The Campbell Soup Company. Beyond CPG, marketing opportunities also exist in other industries such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, biotech/healthcare, hi-tech, and luxury retail.

At the core, a brand manager is a general manager running his or her business (i.e. product line) under the umbrella of the larger corporation, making the skills and characteristics required ones that can be found in a variety of pre-MBA roles. Think about when you have displayed strong leadership, the ability to influence cross-functional teams, comfort with the numbers, a strategic mindset and the creativity and innovation characteristic of excellent brand manager. These examples will form the backbone of your answers to interview questions when these firms come calling.

Fully Leverage Your B-school Experience

Landing a position in brand management is challenging, with top firms typically taking only a handful of MBA interns each year. Most major CPG companies will extend full-time offers to their summer internship class, as well as look to fill additional open positions with students who did brand management internships at other consumer goods companies. This makes it critical for the career switcher to secure a marketing or brand management internship over the summer.

In addition to the strength of your candidacy, your chances for success are at least partially determined by the school you attend. Most major consumer goods companies with brand management internship programs have established recruiting relationships with specific target schools. If your school doesnt have this type of relationship with a company youre interested in, you will have to find out what the firms timeline is for internship recruiting, which usually consists of recruiting events in the fall, with internships interviews occurring January through February. Make sure you get dialed into that timeline. Also, you will need to do substantial networking to break into the selective circles of a firms brand management team and the target-school MBAs they are looking to hire.

The Sharpening Process

What allows MBA students to make dramatic career switches is what we term The Sharpening Process, that occurs during both the first and second year of a full-time program. Through carefully chosen academic work, experiential opportunities and a steady acquisition of industry knowledge you can hone your candidacy for a brand management internship throughout the first year of school. The sharpening process includes gaining marketing knowledge through the b-school experience, understanding how your own experience and skills transfers to brand management, and strategically expanding your network within the field to be at the right place at the right time when firms are ready to hire. The key elements of this sharpening process are below:

• Classes Your career transition in brand management starts marketing knowledge youll glean from your coursework. This will include both traditional marketing breadth requirements, as well as elective marketing courses that expand into analytics and other marketing areas of focus. Youll also cover classic marketing cases on companies such as The Coca-Cola Company, Apple Inc., Target and General Motors, which will help you understand the history and evolution of modern marketing. Below are marketing courses you can expect to find at business schools with top-ranked marketing programs, such as Kellogg, Wharton, and Duke Fuqua: Consumer Insight Tools, Marketing in the C Suite and Boardroom, Integrating Operations and Marketing, Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, and Marketing of Innovation.

• Student Groups Look to join the Marketing student group at the beginning of your first year. This will get you plugged into marketing-related educational sessions, corporate events and any job search-related programming the group might offer (e.g. resume reviews and mock interview prep). Depending on which industries you are focusing on, you may also want to consider joining the Corporate Strategy / General Management, Hi-tech, or the Retail, Apparel and Luxury Goods student groups. Take advantage of your group membership to learn all you can about your function and industry, as well as to build your networks.

• Experiential Learning Opportunities to hone your marketing skills will present themselves at b-school, but youll also have seek out some of these learning experiences, as well. Some schools have student consulting projects that give hands on experience. For example, Kellogg offers Advanced Topics in Marketing, a course where students work in teams on a strategic marketing project for an actual company. Marketing case competitions are held at business schools nationwide, giving you a taste of working on major marketing projects with a diverse team of classmates, similar to what youd actually experience on the job. You may need to find these types of opportunities on your own or find out about them through your marketing student group.

• Networking - Conversations with alums and other professionals in brand management are essential. Particularly if your school is not considered a target school, the only realistic way to get in is to build relationships with professionals within the firm. Hopefully, you will impress them enough so that they champion your candidacy. If you are fortunate enough to attend a b-school that offers access to brand management internships at great firms, youll still need to build relationships ahead of interviews with the campus recruiting team, which could include a team captain (usually a marketing alum from your school) and other marketing professionals for a given brand or portfolio of brands.

• The Internship Marketing internships will be available for those that are serious about entering into the field. The question is whether or not you can land a brand management internship at a brand name firm (no pun intended). Internships at major CPG companies are highly competitive and the most difficult to land. These firms tend to show a preference towards candidates who have previous marketing experience or sector-related work experience. Pharmaceuticals, hi-tech and other business-to-business industries may be easier venues to break into brand management for the dramatic career switcher. These students may also want to consider the other internship

• The Other Internship If you are serious about getting competitive for a brand management internship, a more non-traditional path could be an effective way to help you get there. This could include working for a regional company (e.g. a regional fresh ingredients pizza chain) or start-up company (e.g. an individual entrepreneur developing a new health bar). Find smaller companies that could use a smart MBA to help jumpstart their sales and marketing efforts. Getting this experience, combined with effective networking, could systematically put you in a position to make the move to a larger, better known company.

Lastly, as you start your MBA program and begin speaking with brand management professionals, you will find them to be fun, outgoing, energetic and impassioned about the brands they work on. This personality profile is generally consistent across marketing professionals and brand managers in particular; another important indicator of whether or not if this exciting profession could be a good fit for you.

Best of luck in making the leap!

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Read other "Making the Leap" articles:

• Making the Leap: Do You Have What It Takes for Private Equity?
• Making the Leap: Do You Have What It Takes for Brand Management?