Hi! I’m looking into pivoting my career as more “brand” specialist/ manager. What skill sets would you find crucial to know ? Any advice on tips to learn/ gain experience? Thank you!

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I’d highly recommend Mark Ritson’s Mini MBA in Brand Management. It will give you a really solid foundation.

likehelpful

Thank you for this! I’ll be sure to check it out.

This is coming from someone who was agency side (software development), then client (Sr. Brand Manager at P&G), now consulting (Brand/Innovation Strategy). While at P&G, I was on the Brand New Hire team, college recruitment team, and helped many MBA students with interview coaching.

Brand managers set the strategy. Strategy is choice, and choices are defined by your words. This is why I can not express the importance of writing and conciseness enough. Are you able to invest in writing/storytelling classes or workshops? If not, could you set up some training time with an internal copywriter? Writing is a muscle - highly recommend a little time hitting the 'gym' and flexing those muscles.

At a lot of organizations, brand acts as the hub of the wheel. It’s helpful to have knowledge in things that influence business decisions—like analytics, finance, market research, tech/R&D (depending on industry), etc.

Here are my brand specific reading suggestions (of the top of my head): How Brands Grow, Truth Lies and Advertising, Hey Mr. Wipple Squeeze This!, Creative Mischief, Disruption, Cutting Edge Advertising.

I would also recommend buying some college text books in Consumer Behavior, Behavioral Economics, and Psychology. You don’t need the most current version, look for some older used editions.

Happy to answer any questions you might have. :)

likehelpful

This was super insightful, thanks for sharing!

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A “brand manager” is the equivalent of a hybrid account person and project manager on the agency side.

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I’ve also seen instances where these roles are strategists or strategy adjacent

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If CPG- you’ll be involved in packaging and product design, marketing, competitive assessment and customer research to grow and drive brand equity

If not CPG- it’ll be more about positioning and architecture for the brand. Naming etc

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It would be non CPG, but this is good to know. Thank you!

Follow Graham
Robertson on LinkedIn. His book Beloved Brands is great, and he has some infographics floating around about the necessary skillsets at various levels of brand
Mgmt.

likehelpful

Thank you for sharing this. I’ll go and follow him on LinkedIn.

Learn about branding frameworks around value proposition, positioning, etc, in order to be more strategic and less design-driven. Otherwise you’ll be limited to agency work and creative outputs.

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I would get a certification in project management and learn how to tear apart a P&L. An MBA is very helpful with these skills, but you can learn them through certifications as well!

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In which segment exactly? I would say Tone of Voice and language on one side, but also Neuroscience and how people behave, to help understand audience and consumer patterns - learn about the brand target audience (who they are, what do they like etc) is very important too!

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