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A Day in the Life: Assistant Brand Manager

A Day in the Life
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NEWS ALERT Interested in brand management? Take a look at a typical day in the life of an Vault Message Boards
New Law to assistant brand management... and get ready for a lot of meetings.
Vault Job Search Survival
Raise Student Center
Loan Payments 8:30 Get into work. Listen to voice mails. Check e-mails. Print out calendar of
by $1,000s today's events. Skim the Markets section of the Wall Street Journal to find out
what's happening "on the street." Go to the cafeteria and grab breakfast. (Of
Consolidate course, you're only eating products that your company produces or has some
Your Student relationship with!)
Loans Now!
Beat the new
9:00 Meet with market research department to discuss specifics of your latest
law and lock in round of quantitative research. You are trying to understand why people are not
$1,000s in savings repurchasing your product, but you don't feel that the data presented actually
answers your questions. You decide that you'll need to design another round of
Save up to $400/
research--but where's the money going to come from?
month

10:00 Budget meeting to determine how you will be spending 2nd quarter funds.
Given the decision to spend more money on research, you might need to cancel
Online Degree an instant redeemable coupon or a local promotion in a poorly performing
Programs market.
Boost Your Career
with an Online 10:30 You head to the long-awaited product development meeting. Your team
Degree. Certificate's, has recently discussed reformulating your product to take advantage of new
Bachelor's, Master's, technology. This new technology may raise your product's performance levels,
and Postgraduate but it will cost more to manufacture and will take some advertising effort (and
more money) to explain the changes to the consumer. The group must decide
programs in
whether these changes are strategically and financially justified. As always, very
Business, IT,
few people agree. You decide to summarize all the costs and benefits to the
Education, Health
project and present the issues to your brand manager at the status meeting you
Care, Criminal
have scheduled for the end of the day.
Justice and more.
Get Started Today!
12:00 A fancy lunch with a People magazine salesperson. For months the
magazine has tried to convince you that your product should be advertised in
People. During lunch the represenative explains to you how the publication can

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Vault.com: A Day in the Life: Assistant Brand Manager

effectively reach x percent of your target audience and how it can provide you
with the extended reach you need to communicate with potential new users.
You leave lunch with a fancy People backpack and a headache. Where can I
find the money to add People to my media plan? Let's ask the media
department?

1:30 Media planning meeting. Because sales of your product have come in
slightly under budget, you have been forced to give up 10 percent of your media
budget. You now must meet with the media department to determine how to cut
media funds without sacrificing your goals (to reach 20 percent of your target
group, and to have a continuous presence on TV etc?..) Maybe you can cut out
two weeks of TV in July when not many people are home anyway?.but is that
your product's peak purchase cycle? Decisions, decisions?

2:30 Time to review changes to the latest advertising campaign. Your ad

agency presented a new concept about three weeks ago that was a diamond in
the rough. You and your brand manager made comments to the storyboard
(drawing/copy that explains a commercial) and now you are anxious to see what
the agency comes back with. You review the changes with the agency via
conference call and promise to present the new work to your brand manager at
your status meeting later in the day.

3:15 Keep the ad agency on the phone and bring in the in-house promotions
department. This ad campaign will be blown out into a promotional campaign in
the top 20 performing markets in the country. You want to make sure that before
you get the promotions people working on a concept, they agree with the
agency on the strategy going forward?the following 45 minutes is a creative
brainstorming session that offers wonderful possibilities. You promise to type all
ideas up and distribute them to the group later in the week?

4:00 Strategy development with sales manager. Your category manager is

insisting that all brands work to gain a better presence in supermarkets. You
meet with the regional sales manager to understand what types of strategies
might work to get better shelf space and more consistent in-store promotions.
Once you hear his/her ideas, you start to cost out options and see if this is
possible within the current budget.

5:00 Status meeting with Brand Manager. You present the proposal for new
research as well as the implications of the new product development issue. You
also review the latest advertising changes and the changes to the media plan.
You aggressively present your data and your opinion and discuss these with
your boss. The two of you decide on next steps.

6:00 Back in the office you wrap up for the day. You spend an hour checking the
20+ email/voice mail messages you received during the day but failed to return.
You go through your "in" box to read any documents relevant to your product.
You start to attack all of the work you have to do and promise that tomorrow
you'll block out some private time to make some progress.

This article is excerpted from the Vault Career Guide to Marketing and Brand
Management.
Read more excerpts or purchase the guide
Discuss marketing and brand management careers at the Marketing and Brand
Management Career Message Board

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Vault.com: A Day in the Life: Assistant Brand Manager

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Looking Back, and Forward With Hope

By LISA BELKIN
It's become a "Life's Work" tradition at this time of year to catch up with
people I've written about in the past and ask them about their hopes for the
future.
Stepping Onto a Career Path Lighted by a Seasoned Guide
By TANYA MOHN
A mentoring program at Baruch College in New York which matches alumni
with students seeking jobs is part of national trend.
From Anti-'Uppity' to Upwardly Mobile
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
StreetWise, founded in 1997, recruits corporate professionals to train and
serve as mentors to low-income people.

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