 Welcome to Boost Your Employability, a CIM Marketing Club session. My name is Johnny Crawley and I am learner partnership manager at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I'm your host for the session. So for today's session we're really lucky to be joined by two expert marketers, Helen Hepworth and Vicky Smith, who have agreed and are kind enough to share their top tips and some guidance on getting into marketing as a career. Their marketing career stories, category management, retail storytelling, what brand management is and isn't and how CIM helps them with their careers. So a bit background about Helen and Vicky. So Helen is founder of Collective Stories. She's a strategic storyteller, not just in the once upon a time sense, but in 2019 after a grand career adventure working in multinational fast-moving consumer goods suppliers, supporting some of the largest retailers in the world. Helen founded Collective Stories. It's an FMCG category management consultancy. So Helen, using her talents and insight, creative storytelling and commercial skills has built collective stories from the ground up to help FMCG suppliers craft the right story to achieve and maintain listings in the UK retailers. First to admit it, Helen rejects blandness and loves impactful stories, particularly strategic stories delivered in the most creative and possible ways. Helen's an active regional board member of the CIM and having completed her CIM postgraduate diploma in 2003. Vicky is co-founder and director at Alante Marketing and a strategic marketing consultancy that specialises in helping startups and small and medium-side enterprise with their brand strategy. She spent the last 20 years working across big and small brands, including Lerpac, Anker and Cravendale, Lacks of Free and Anker Harriet Foods. She's also worked with industry bodies such as Organic Trade Board, Dairy UK to develop industry wide campaigns. Vicky also holds a CIM professional certificate and progress graduate diploma. So marketing club, what is it? So initially it was created primarily to support students from their CIM accredited degree and prepare them for a career in marketing. The events are typically available to CIM members, but the marketing practitioners are welcome to attend as well. CIM accredited degree programme enables students to gain a professional marketing qualification and taking advantage of their module exemptions the CIM accredited degree provides. So if your university or degree or programme is accredited by CIM, you can fast track your way to CIM qualification and also I'll be available at the end of the presentations to answer any questions you may have around that. If you're a student, you can sign up to our free of charge CIM newsletter. Each edition of CIM newsletter will provide you with content designed to support your studies and actively manage your professional development by keeping you up to date with the latest trends, innovations and concepts in the marketing industry. If you haven't already grabbed the QR code on the screen or send your link down the QR code and you can sign up to that after today's event. So before we get started with this afternoon's presentations I'd just like to mention that you can download a copy of the presentation slides that will be going through and any reading resources relevant to today's session. They'll only be available to download whilst we're broadcasting so please make sure if you are interested in that, do you download them now before the session finishes and we'll be recording the webinar which will be available to watch again on demand in a few days via the Graduate Gateway web page and CIM YouTube channel. The presentations will last for about 45 minutes and you'll be able to interact by submitting any questions that you have as part of a Q&A session that we will do our best to to answer those questions at the end of the presentation. So please do interact with us, drop those into the chat and you'll be able to do this by clicking on the question mark which you'll find the right hand side of your screen. So if you're watching on a laptop that's on the right hand side of your screen you'd like to share any thoughts on today's session on social media then you can do that by using the hashtag that's on the screen so that's the hashtag CIM events which you can see on the screen right now. So I'd like to hand over to our guest speakers Helen Hepworth and Vicky Smith and so over to you Vicky. Hi thank you for the introduction so my name is Vicky it's actually Murray Smith's my maiden name but there's a very strong chance that I gave you that because I quite frequently refer myself to myself as Smith still. So CIM had asked me to come and talk a little bit about my career path to you guys and and how I've kind of navigated through the world of marketing and also a little bit about brand management and the role of brand management and to give you some tips and advice around the kind of core competencies for that discipline that you'll want to look at how you can demonstrate when you're going to interviews. So I guess just to kick off in in terms of how I started my career in marketing probably pretty similar to to where you guys are now so I did a this is me 22 years ago looking quite fresh faced. I did a degree and then a masters in marketing and I did my CIM advanced certificate and post grabbed certificates as part of those qualifications which I think is what Johnny was just talking about. So and now I run as Johnny had already said a strategic marketing and brand consultancy called Atalanta and we specialise in startups and we actively campaign for better representation of women in marketing and before that I spent the last sort of seven or eight years really started that just before Christmas and I spent the last seven or eight years working for all across some of the in my opinion most exciting brands in the UK including Anker, Lerpac, Sgear and and Cravendale but in terms of how I got there Johnny would you mind just going to the next slide. Find out to think about your career in marketing as being quite linear I think if you just you know you just progress in quite a specific channel to more and more senior job titles actually you can miss out on really kind of getting a breadth of rich experience that kind of can enrich your CV and basically make you a better marketer and I think some of the twists and turns in my career have helped me do that and also helped me really figure out what I wanted to do long term so in terms of where I started I actually didn't want to work in marketing to start with. I wanted to be a TV journalist and I spent quite a lot of time getting work experience on TV programmes in newspapers and I had a degree lined up to study TV film, theatre and literature and basically what happened is my boyfriend at the time failed all his A levels and I went with him to a career session to try and help him work out what he was going to do next and I got chatting with a marketing lecturer and it sounded pretty interesting it's not something I'd really considered before I'd got a summer job working in a PR agency and I was really enjoying it and so I actually decided to defer my marketing my degree place and carry on working in the PR agency and start a marketing degree and I was actually thinking eventually I'll go back to the other degree I'll just do it to learn a bit about it in the interim but really enjoyed it really enjoyed working for the PR agency really enjoyed the degree and when it got to the year I decided actually I'm going to carry on with the marketing degree I'm really interested in it and I'll complete that and then I'll do my journalistic qualifications so I then I then moved into a role as a press officer for Doncaster Council which probably doesn't sound that sexy on the surface but actually I arrived at Doncaster Council right in the middle of what is still one of the largest ever public local authority corruption scandals on my first day when I went to meet the the leader of the council he got arrested dramatically and people got arrested every day we had floods we had crises and it actually ended up being a very interesting experience working there but kind of after I've been there a couple of years I kind of and by this point I'd been doing my marketing degree for two or three years I kind of had decided actually I'm not sure I want to do journalism and press anymore I think that actually I'm quite interested in FMTG at fast moving consumer goods which Helen's going to talk about and brand and marketing and that's more what I want to do so I kind of what I started to do then was apply for graduate schemes for Diageo, Coca-Cola all those kinds of businesses and at this point I was still only 21 because I actually did my degrees at night and I worked full-time at the same time so I had work experience but I was still only 21 I was still only the same age as all the other graduates in my cohort but what I heard time and time again was that we're not interested in you because you've already been working we want people that we can mould and you've already got experience and you don't have a degree from a red brick university so I kind of thought well I just have to find another way to get there so I started to try to look the jobs that would give me broadband order experience to get me into a more of a marketing role I moved to install shopper agency as their PR manager called Bezier I worked my way up to communications manager there and I then wanted to sort of broaden again into sort of broader marketing skills a lot of the recruitment agents I spoke to said to me no you've chosen PR now that's your area it's going to be very difficult for you to get into any kind of marketing job you should continue on your PR route a job came up at a local radio station for a marketing manager which I thought sounded like fun I knew I was already on the back foot so I applied directly and I sent a really creative application in which I encourage you to think about it I basically recorded my CV on to cassette tapes which you're all probably too young to even know what they are but the the radio stations slogan at the time was 80s 90s now music so and I themed my CV and all my experience around albums from those eras I got an interview I got job I had a fantastic time there I got promoted to marketing groups regional marketing director across all of the Yorkshire stations and it was really kind of the dream job I was doing sponsorship deals with sports clubs kind of running big concerts and events all manner of advertising and communications and a fantastic role unfortunately the group of radio stations like most radio stations became networks that meant they no longer had local stations they were broadcasting everything from a national station so all the regional roles were made redundant it's completely devastated I really didn't you know I really didn't know what to do next I I could have gone into another senior role at that point because I obviously I have the title and I've been sat on the board but I actually decided I was going to have another crack at trying to get into brand and FMCG so I again went to recruitment agents none of them would put me forward for FMCG brand roles because they said I didn't have a classical FMCG background so I thought well I'll figure my own way out again so I applied for an interim role at Betty's and Taylor's to cover the marketing director was succonded to run Betty's by tap post the marketing director was actually Tandyn Daniel who's now my business partner and that's how I met her so that was one fantastic thing to come out of that but I took over as marketing manager there in an interim contract and I learned all the skills that I was missing from a from a brand management point of view I learned about product development and briefing pricing promotions the elements that I perhaps hadn't experienced in some of my other roles and that really then enabled me to then move into what is more classic FMCG role so I moved to a small brand owner called Simmington's as a brand manager on Ainsley Harriet and really enjoyed that grew that brand 15% in a year or so and then moved to so a role come up at Arla and for a brand manager on their lacto free brand which is quite small brands bit of a sideways move but I thought it was a good opportunity to get some fresh FMCG experience took that role did really well on that got them sort of double digit growth over a couple of years put my hands up to work on a satellite project to explore how Arla could launch into the yoghurt category where they didn't have a presence and nearly killed me did that project alongside my other job and out of that was launched Arla Sgeir and Protein which was worth 16 million within its first year and continue to drive significant incremental growth for Arla that got me a promotion so I became the senior brand manager on Cravendale which is a big milk brand that brand has been in decline for seven or eight years and within a year I got it into 10% growth which got me another promotion so then I worked on anchor butter and took that over again anchor butter had had quite challenging time that it had a lot of problems going on it wasn't making money it had been declining in terms of say it was making money but the profitability was down it had been declining in terms of sales and the creative was not working and I did a big project to redevelop the brand strategy for that brand and all the creative strategy and turned it round from 17% decline to 17% growth within a year and the strategy has still continued to drive year on year growth for it so that's been great. I then got promoted to look after all of the butters and spreads category for Arla so I was the senior branding category manager so managing a low pack anchor and the own label products again absolutely made it that's kind of what I wanted to do it's brilliant by this point I obviously spent quite a bit of time working on big brands over the last sort of eight years or so and decided I really wanted to go back into a small brand where I could really make a difference with some of this fantastic experience that I gathered and so I took a role as a head of marketing in a smaller brand at that point I decided I didn't really want to go into a director role where I was managing people I like doing marketing I want something still quite hands on and that ended up being a bit of a disaster for me I just had a massive personality clash with the MD and the the business didn't really reflect my values and I didn't enjoy it there I stayed for a very short amount of time took a bit of time to regroup went back to Arla did an interim contract and then decided to set up my agency which which we've been doing for the last six months maybe longer now and absolutely loving it so I think I guess all I'm saying to you is when you're thinking about what you want to do you don't need to pick a specific discipline I would when you're looking at the different roles that you want to move to I would always try to have a look at a something that you're going to enjoy and feel passionate about because ultimately you'll make it work if that's how you feel about it and when you're kind of looking at what your next job is I would just encourage you to keep looking at your CV and looking at where your skill gaps are and what role can you take that's going to help you fill those skill skill gaps rather than being focused on just necessarily getting a peg up because that ultimately will make you a better marketer and get you further in the end so that's a kind of a pretty well not so brief history of my career and and how I got to to where I am so I guess in terms of brand management I'm going to talk about five things I think it is and and and therefore the things that you need to be able to demonstrate competencies around when you're going for interviews if you want to work in this area and five things it isn't so I think the first thing is that for me brand management is a very commercial job you're essentially responsible for the P&L of your brand and if you want to be taken seriously in the boardroom and you want to be able to be the person making the decisions that's going to make a difference to the growth of your brand and also if you want to be able to get get budgets in the first place and then have autonomy and control over that you really need to know your numbers and be prepared to spend quite a lot of time looking at category data and sales data and working with category team and I've worked with Helen fantastic people like Helen that can really help you understand your brand health and what's driving your performance and that's becoming really okay with systems like Nielsen, Cantar, Dunhumby, Millwood Brown and understanding how to use them and how that data works. Your job as a brand manager primarily is to figure out what's happening with your brand and what's driving your performance so you know is it that you're getting new customers is it is it through loyalty are people just buying you more frequently what's driving your performance and where are your customers going and coming from what brands are they moving out to what brands are they coming in from and what's driving that change is it something tactical like a promotion or is it kind of long term category changes and trends like veganism or ethics that like which was a massive issue as you can imagine for dairy and what plan are you going to put in place to to to then resolve that longer term. It's also kind of understanding not just your sales but also your profitability so you know I was remember when I was on lacto free cheese lacto free cheese for example was 3% of our sales and very volume driven business that is also said man maybe we should just forget the cheese it's only 3% of our sales bit of a waste of time you know and you need to in that moment be able to say yeah but it's 25% of our profit so I don't think we should be getting rid of it and actually we need to look at how we can make it a big part of the portfolio so I guess what I'm saying is if you want to work in brand management I think you just need to be prepared to prepared and able to really get comfortable with data and most people that come in as assistant brand managers or sort of new don't feel that comfortable with that and it takes some time to get used to it but I'd really encourage you to do that and also think about when you're going for interviews how you can demonstrate that you're used to handling data and analysing data because it's a huge part of the role and if you rely on other people to do it which you can do you can work with fantastic category of people that can give you some of that data and insight but it's really good to actually get to grips with it yourself because quite often that's where you might spot something from a different perspective that somebody might not see so the first thing is knowing your numbers getting comfortable with data and being able to demonstrate that in interviews is really important to brand management the next thing is around insight not information so yeah I've just talked a lot about the numbers but what I would say is it's about understanding what's driving numbers and not just regurgitating them so brand management is about insight not information that's a phrase I've nicked from Arla that they talk about quite a lot so it's ultimately about what are the numbers and data telling you about consumer behaviours and consumer needs and how that's impacting your brand and what corrective action that you need to take so for example when I worked in Butter kind of a big issue for us is that you know 70% of these numbers will have changed but something like 70% of people that eat by butter block butter traditional butter are over 60 and that ratio is increasing each year but those people are eating more butter so when you look at your sales on the surface your sales are growing in the short term and over the last few years it looks great but actually when you start to dig around those trends like what is that what's going to happen then to your brand in 30 years time if you don't do something to bring new consumers in and that's where you're kind of really digging underneath the data to figure out what's happening and what action you need to take longer term to keep your brand growing before it gets to a point where you just into decline and then it's a long term game to track that and the way that you then do that after you've spotted those trends it's then around you know insight and insight and research for me is really the lifeblood of brand management so it's really that how do you understand why consumers what consumers the data tells you what they're doing but why are they doing it so putting an emphasis on commissioning research and even if you work on a small brand where you've not got budget just go and talk to people and just figure out you know in the butter example why are young people not eating butter what are they doing instead what's driving is it health is it ethics what is it that's driving it and really understand that so you know I guess the second thing then linked to the first point is that you know brand management is really as with all types of marketing is really about looking behind but constantly looking behind the numbers and trying to understand what you consumers are doing and thinking and why and then what you can do to to better meet their needs and better align to that the third thing let me just move to the next slide is around being the guardian of the positioning so I think a somewhat obvious one but I guess I used to think that it was my job to come up with a positioning for a brand and actually positioning is is is pretty simple you know it's it's a what is the the defining product attribute of your product and then what functional emotional needs does that mean for who and really that's not something you can make up it's just that and you just need to figure out what it is you need to go and speak to the to the previous point you need to go and figure out speak to consumers and figure out what that is and that's your job as a as a brand manager or a senior brand manager to work out what that is and then hold everybody to it and that's not just about I think there's a lot of confusion between creative strategy and positioning and actually positioning is quite dull so if you look at Coca Cola's positioning statement it's something like we are a high quality beverage business all our beverages are refreshing and that that enhances the the lives of our consumers and makes them feel happy and that's their positioning statement but what you see is their creative strategy so the taste the freshness or whatever strap line they're using at the time the red the the thumb and the sort of distinctive assets and I think there's a big distinction between when you're a brand manager it's not your job to come up with that stuff it's your job to come up with the positioning and the strategy and then hold everything else to it so an easy mistake to make is when you're getting great creative through and you see a real exciting campaign and you think ah I just love it it's going to be fantastic but it's about really asking the hard questions around is that absolutely going to appeal to my consumer is the is the thing that it's talking about completely linked to my strategy to the benefit that I'm and the consumer needs that I'm trying to meet and it's not just doing that with comms it's doing that with everything you do when you when you're having an argument with commercial around promotional pricing strategy does that link in with the consumer you're targeting and how they use the product and what they're prepared to pay when you're looking at developing new products it's holding anything that you develop or if you're changing packaging to that strategy and that's your job you're the guardian of the positioning you're not you're the voice of the consumer and you should be so close to your consumerism understand them so well that you can almost speak on their behalf and that's your job not to make up that stuff just understand what your consumer's perspective is and keep all elements of the brand and marketing um on board with that strategy that's the third thing and then the fourth thing is around getting people on board so brand management is kind of ultimately then about getting people on board so you can have the best product and brand strategy in the world but if you can't if you can't persuade your grumpy operations director to make it for you because it's going to be a bit of a a pain to have to change something on his line or you can't get your salespeople to go out and sell it to you when they speak when they speak into client or you can't get the retailer to list it or indeed you can't get your CEO to give you the budget to support your plans then it's never going to go anywhere and such a huge part of the job is around having strong communication skills and interpersonal skills and being able to communicate ideas in a simple and compelling way that'll get people on board with them and make them want to um to support you and make stuff happen um and I think when you particularly when you're going for interviews with brand management roles that's something that that that people are really going to be looking for because it's such an important part of the job having strong persuasive skills and being able to get people on board with with your strategy and what you want to do because quite often you're the person giving the slightly uncomfortable news that either if we don't do something about this and that's going to require a change and it's going to cost some money this is what's going to happen to your sales and it's again when all those other things have just talked about in terms of the data and the sales all needs to be brought together to create compelling arguments for why you need budget or why you want to launch a product or why a retailer should list you so getting people on board I think is the fourth kind of um most important thing or element of a brand management and then number five so and then number five probably an obvious point um but but a bit of a stumbling block is just making it happen so um again you can have all those like shiny plans and products but brand management isn't just about kind of coming up with like fun advertising and the strategy it's about making it happen and and the job isn't done to the products on the shelf or indeed in a consumer's shopping basket and on the way home and all the up front planning bit can be quite energising but actually then after you've done that bit there's the new line forms to fill in to make sure it gets it actually gets installed as the managing rosters of agency after they've done the fun presentation to actually make them deliver the things that they said they would deliver there's setting up the bar codes there's going to an industrial site in Leicester at three a.m. in the morning to sign off your packaging when it comes off the print run and standing on the end of the production line as the product comes off the shelf to make sure it's been packed correctly in the srp so that it's going to be facing the consumer when they come out and they're the things those little things managing those things are what gives you a successful launch and ultimately gets your product selling and I think that there's a real when people are recruiting for brand managers they're looking for people with excellent product management skills because and project management skills because it's not just about having a great strategic mind being able to do all that up front stuff that we just talked about on the commercial stuff it's also about having the tenacity and the project management skills to actually make it happen and manage it through and when you come across obstacles which you absolutely well making figuring out a way to to overcome them and make it happen in terms of briefly the five things that I think often people think it is that it isn't just on the next thank you and I think one is a sort of champagne and agency so I think some people think that when you move into like a brand management job particularly on a a sexy brand or a big brand it's going to be all kind of like mad man you're going to be kind of having the like drinks trolley coming round at four o'clock and it's really not like that usually in in in FMC June particularly you're in a kind of bit of a basic office attached to a warehouse quite often and you do do a bit of agency stuff but it's a small part of the job and I think all the stuff I've talked about before is kind of what the bulk of the role is. I think a lot of people think that it's all about communications and it's absolutely not communications is part of it but really it's only kind of a small part of it and you know and sometimes now even digital communications is only a part of that part communications is about 25 percent of your job if that is doing all the other stuff the NPD the all the things that I've just talked about in terms of making the role work. I think that's people think that to be a brand manager or a working marketing you have to be kind of really creative and come up with out their ideas and I would just say that it's more about problem solving so than than Zany out their ideas it's about coming up with ways to solve a problem and that might be how you communicate to a to a market or how you can refocus on a different audience to grow your brand but it might be just about how are you going to position something or talk about it in order to get a buyer to list it if you run out of an ingredient or something like that how can you pivot your product in a different way to overcome those kinds of issues and problems. The fourth one in terms of secondary to sales I think that sometimes in some businesses and I think if you find yourself in a business where you feel that your role is secondary to sales I'd evaluate whether you want to say that marketing in my opinion should drive the business it's what sets the strategy it should be what's set in the direction for what's sold and and it should be the voice of the consumer and that should be leading what sales are going out and selling rather than something that's secondary to sales and commercials and also if you're doing a good enough job about managing your numbers and making sure you're growing that be less of an issue anyway and I think the fifth thing is sometimes I've often still hear people talk about brand management as the kind of cutting out and colouring in department and I think there's just something around also that kind of it's not about that and codes visual codes and distinctive assets are a really important part building a brand you know where would cope be without the cope logo and the red it's the way that you instantly know what brand you're talking about and there's something around when people make those kinds of comments just sort of making sure that people are aware of that and how important that stuff is because that stuff has a value on the balance sheet at the end of the day if you create equity in your codes and assets it has a commercial value for your brand you know in terms of as well as of helping with recognition and so on so yeah I guess briefly that's my kind of summary of five things I think brand management is and five things it isn't you know I think that you know in summary brand management is a strategic function and it should leave the business and where it's going and where products are going and what Comdes is saying your pricing is selling you know and everything so it's vitally important and there is still nowhere else I'd rather be in terms of my career I still love working on brands and brand management so yeah that's that's my kind of quick guide to brand management I guess just to close just on the final slide Johnny asked me to just sort of cover off how CIM helped my career so I think that there's kind of forky ways really I think the first one is around practical applications so and when I'm recruiting for brand managers or marketing assistants in the past I look for people that have got CIM qualification over whether they've got a marketing degree and that's because CIM I think is around actually giving you the skills to apply the things that the sort of marketing theory in a practical way and when I did my first CIM qualification I failed my first module I failed it and I was in absolute shock I've never even done badly academically anything before and when I kind of got some coaching about that I realised it's because I was still talking in a very theoretical theoretical way about using some theory or some model and actually see I ams about well this business has got this problem what are you going to do to fix it and that actually is going to help you a lot more in the real world than some of the then kind of talking about theories and stuff that nobody really understands particularly when you're trying to get people across the business on board with what you're doing I think the connections are really valuable so the people that you meet on a CIM course or if you come to the events and you go to the I used to be very involved in the South Yorkshire committee I really helpful peer group for advice for bouncing ideas off and also just from a career point of view they're probably going to be in organisations that you're potentially interested in it creates structures and frameworks and a lot of the sort of structures and frameworks for analysing data or evaluating work are things that I learned on CIM and I still use them now I've adapted them slightly but I still use a lot of those frameworks because it makes it easy for to sort of demonstrate your ideas to the people and I think generally also the kind of emphasis on continuous learning so I think that you know we're all still learning I still I'm still constantly trying to read up and find out about things I don't know about or get new perspectives on marketing from courses and I think that you know CIM is more than just doing the qualification and then that's it you know they really are about continuous learning and continue developing because I think with marketing is ever changing but you know the more you know the more you realise you just don't know so that's a really great philosophy to have and something that I've tried to continue with throughout my career. Wow thank you Vicky that was brilliant so as Vicky said Vicky and I know each other we've worked together and I can just absolutely testify nobody knows brand like Vicky and really does live and breathe it's her passion so I'm going to talk to you now about my passion and I really hope that somebody out there in the in the ether recognises who's on the screen now I wish we had a chat box going for this very reason because normally I like to interact a little bit but on the screen now we've got somebody called Alexis Carrington who is actually played by John Collins the actress so I'm going to talk to you now about my awesome 80s which is basically my journey through CIM through the world of work and to where I am now and where I hope to go really so the 80s unfolded like this for me 1984 I think it was six yeah it was six and a TV show came out completely challenged the way that women were portrayed in the world of work so I'll tell you a little bit about Alexis and the fact that she was divorced by her husband for being unreasonable she was a business woman she was a millionaire but the best thing about Alexis apart from the fact that she had a phone in her car I don't know if you can see that which I think is pretty awesome um she dressed amazingly she knew what she wanted and as a six year old that was really impactful for me because they weren't the role models that had around me at that time so I made a decision there that I wanted to be in business wanted to be a business woman so throughout my school career my A levels college etc etc I knew I wanted to go into business and want to make the decision to do a degree I still didn't quite know which area of business I wanted to go into and at this time in the early 90s mid 90s you know marketing was still not really an academic discipline that was widely promoted so I did a business degree just general international business graduated did a placement in an advertising agency in France absolutely amazing but then when I graduated I had this sense of working in product development I worked for him if you want another specifics of my career I've got my QR code coming up so just stop me on LinkedIn and you can see where I've been and what I've done and you know the rules that I've had but one of my very officials was product development and product development doesn't actually feel like a marketing role but it very much is so I did a post-grad diploma and luckily my degree had qualified because I went to Northumbria had qualified me for exemptions towards the post-grad so I only had to do I think it was three modules and like Vicki I actually failed one I was absolutely devastated it never failed anything before in my life apart from a driving test eight times but don't judge um I've never failed anything and I couldn't understand it and again just like Vicki I look back now and I think it's because I wasn't learning this DIM way of practical application and really moving from an academic sense to having more in situation experience and melding the two together so eventually past found the whole thing incredibly useful made lots of contacts made lots of friends which was great after coming out of uni and my CIM qualification then gave me exemptions to do a masters so everything was very fast tracked and allowed me to specialise so I did a masters in private labels so I'm going to talk about FMCG in a moment of what it means but my masters was written about a subject that I was very passionate about I'm still am so again if you want to have a finite minutia of my career have a look on my LinkedIn profile but in 2019 I made a decision to step away from industry um as in paid employment and to set up my own agency so I set up collective stories um best decision I've ever made moved away from a very commercial role of very category management centric role and built this agency whereby we go into businesses and we help them get onto retail shelves but more importantly with a lot of our clients we help them to stay there and we help them to grow we're very very storytelling focused we're a creative business we have an excellent design arm that makes sure as you can see today everything we do looks beautiful our stories are always beautiful so I've founded collective stories which I'll talk more about later on so as you can see every single date on that screen indicates that I'm not finished on my journey and being awarded CIM fellowship still didn't feel like I was finished so I'm working towards charted status which means I work with CIM to submit CPD so I have to do something that's reflecting all of my learnings that I'm constantly accessing the content on the hub um I use a lot of the CIM content in thought leadership in storytelling in creativity in digital video making I was looking at the other day which was excellent you know I access that all the time because it's constantly building my product um and then in 2021 I was appointed to the board so I'm a regional active board member which I've only just started on but I'm very excited about and again I'm not finished so actually on this slide Johnny I am finished so let's move on to the next one so FMCG so Vicky referred to it I referred to it we talk about FMCG all the time and what you'll notice about both Vicky and I is we absolutely love our industry I love FMCG fast moving consumer goods it's fast it's exciting you have to have passion you have to love your brands when Vicky was talking I got a real sense of how much she loved the brands that she'd worked on and that's important you need to love what you're going to do so I want you to take away some points from my rambling today and I want you to become excited about potential careers in FMCG this is a personal mission of mine we have within our region and within the UK lots of really really strong and amazing retailers FMCG means things that we consume daily things that we buy in supermarkets it can be butter it can be toilet paper it can be little moons which I'll come on to in a second it can be Colin and Cuthbert it's things we consume it's fast it's exciting so I've just put some hot topics on on this slide now because again this is something that constantly I'm not finished I'm always learning about what's going on in my industry and I tried to keep abreast because I need to know the stories of my industry so that I can build them for my clients so Little Moons is really exciting and if anybody in the audience has kids and has TikTok Little Moons are tiny tiny frozen desserts and they're a TikTok sensation and trying to get hold of them I must have been to four retailers in a week to get hold of them for my daughter she doesn't know why she wants them but TikToks told her that she should the second one the M is Colin and Cuthbert so if you haven't if you've been living under a rock and you've missed the Colin and Cuthbert saga that's been going on over the past month google it get on board with that think about the wider issues to that story why is that story important to our industry it's Eminet taking on Alde saying let's stop doing that stop copying and stop taking our USPs it's not right it's wrong and you know the rebuttals and it's all unfolding on social media in a really interesting way so again something exciting about FMCG the third one is sustainable feminine hygiene products massive focus within our industry you know we can't go on like this we can't go on consuming consuming consuming we have to be responsible citizens of this planet we live on the next one and I think probably Vicky is better to talk about this one but this is just something exciting that's going on in the dairy category that's a different way of melding dairy and oats together for the overnight oat proposition very interesting product very interesting story massively recommend that you google that one if you are in FMCG the last one which is actually a question mark it doesn't have a letter I just put it on there because I love it I love the household category I love the laundry category because what they're always trying to do is think of new ways of selling as new products ironing water a spray that you put on your clothes to stop it wrinkling 24-hour freshness for your clothes it's constantly extending usage it's constantly extending products and how exciting is that so I hope I've got you fired up about FMCG and what it could be now I'm going to explain to you exactly what it is that I do next slide please so I work in category management and it's always one of those where probably even my family don't really know what I do but once you get into category management and once you get into FMCG you will hear about category management and how important it is within a team within a FMCG business so brand and category management very interchangeable a lot of stuff that Vicky was talking about was nodding going that's so right that's so right you know being referred to as the colour and in department where referred to as the charting service you know it's just making sure that you own the job the role that you're in you know everything about that role and you know where it fits in and you know what change that you can affect so let's just go through a few definitions I'm also a little bit of an academic but not too much so I've put some good definitions in here that I use all the time so the first one is what actually is a category so I mentioned that FMCG is things we use things we consume things that we buy in a supermarket and we interact with every day milk bread toilet paper so a category of those is milk belongs to dairy it's a distinct to manageable group of products that cute consumers consider to be related butter also belongs to dairy feminine hygiene belongs to personal care toothbrushes belong to dental nap is belong to baby you can see where I'm going with this so how do we manage these groups of categories to make sure that people just aren't going out there and flooding products onto shelves that we don't actually want how do we work in a smart way so this is where category management comes along and I'm going to take you on a little journey of how we got there in a second but category management describes an arrangement or process whereby instead of just focusing on one brand we look at every brand within the category how exciting is that the thought of looking at a row of soups on a shelf and there's different brands in there and every single one of those different brands has a different role every single one of those different brands there's different flavours has a different job to do that doesn't just happen by accident it's very scientific as Vicky said it's about knowing that customer it's about knowing what they went what they want to buy and when they want to buy it so that definition there is absolutely spot on for me and then at the end I've just put well why do we do this why do we bother the purpose of it and it's about making sure that we are as marketers we are marketing the right product in the right way to meet the needs of this really complex market so just a little bit of insight for you there next slide please so this definition is very non-scientific and I've just thrown it out I love a journey I think it's always the best way I'm very visual person but this brief and non-scientific history of category and I've crossed out management there because actually I'm on a little bit of a mini campaign with the word management because management to me infers holding it looking after it it doesn't feel dynamic it doesn't feel like you're doing something with it it doesn't feel like it's moving on and up so we refer it our business to category development it's a small thing but it's important we like to be a business that does what we say we're going to do we live and die by our principles okay so cast your mind back to the actual dawn of time so I refer to this as the age of spray and pray and this was I love that picture that Vicky put up of Mantlen because that's what it was it was brands trying to get as much of their product on shelf as they could so really really trying to get everything 15 of their products on shelf whether it was right for the customer doesn't really matter they didn't really care whether it was right for the retailer again zero cares given they wanted to sell as much as they can but then as supermarkets became bigger and branches became more and more and more it became very very obvious in the industry that we had to do something and there was a recognition in our industry that we could do better so then we've got what I call the adaptive wilderness where people realise that they needed to do better and in the 80s Brian F. Harris who came up with most of the concepts about category management and why we needed it he actually said in the 80s we need to be more responsible we need to make sure that we are not just throwing everything onto these shelves but that was in the 80s and probably category management didn't come to the forefront of most retail and SME sorry retail and supply businesses until the early 90s and even then there was a big fight we had about it so we did adopt category management practices of reviewing ranges working with space speaking to consumers but pulling all of that together it was very much a sales driven wilderness out there a sales driven landscape and people worked in silos whereas now we found in the you know 2020 and even before that this feeling in FMCG of actually category management should be at the front because we are really important we pull together the insight the story the commercial aspect of it so I am a commercial category manager I will never make a recommendation to my clients that's not going to work out for the client the retailer and the customer the consumer that's not what we do so category management behaviour in FMCG has become intuitive the future is clear the future is category management but what we need to make sure is that category management does not become repeating repeating repeating that it is about telling a story and telling it well and developing this story telling mindset next slide please so I've just put on this slide here and I won't go through them all because I'm conscious of time all of the different things that a category manager will do so a category manager will review what's going on shelves they will make sure that they've scooped up the right trends in the market they will know what's happening with their customers they are close to the data we absolutely love data as category managers we can't get enough of it it's what we live and breathe by but we also know how to turn data into a story we know how to turn data into a strategic vision we are evolving we are resilient and that's why we really fight at collective stories to not refer to ourselves as category managers we are developers we are evolving we are constantly challenging and we do all of this by storytelling so I'm really conscious with webinars to make your time count so what I've done on the next slide please Johnnie is pull together my top five storytelling tips so at the end of this presentation if you don't remember anything that I said and my jaunty leopard top you will remember these five top storytelling tips because collective stories we are storytelling experts and I just want to get across what how to make a story and this can be a category management a category development story or it can be a brand story it can be a strategy story any element of marketing that you want to go in it can be a digital story do your story well let's change things let's have a story telling revolution so the first thing I'm going to talk to you about is clarity if you do do not know the problem you are trying to solve the product you are trying to sell the issue you are trying to resolve if you don't know it well enough your story will never be clear so have clarity of what you're trying to achieve number two is probably one of my favourites and it's probably the most challenging working with larger businesses and this corporate mindset it's avoiding the well-trodden path and it's making sure that people aren't trotting out insight that is old narratives that aren't changing and I'll give you an example here in the pandemic a lot of my clients would be quite nervous about recommending stuff because all they could hear in the heads were recession recession recession you know when they were giving macro insights out as part of the story they talk about recessionary pressures and say you know there's a recession coming but actually the pandemic changed on an hourly basis a daily basis you have to be careful about what you said so if you have a narrative a macro level narrative like okay legislation don't keep trotting it out challenge it make sure it's up to date make sure it's it's excuse me current and that it's not well trodden I would really challenge that the third is form and content so form and content well we are a design based agency as well we've got an amazing creative director who makes everything look amazing and challenges poor power point so poor power point to me is something that is cluttered it's not beautiful it's not stylish it's got too much on it so think about brevity and the economy of words Hemingway can tell a story in six words challenge yourself to do that please don't put too much on a slide if it's a very cluttered slide it should be a report if you feel that you've got to have mammoth amount of text on there it should be a report it should be sent before or after the presentation never ever ever lose substance over style so you might have the most beautiful slide but still is it working as hard as it could the fourth point again conscious of time is the end okay so the end of a presentation should never be the end it should never be the end we've finished okay let's go home it's right what's next what do we do now how can we make this change happen if you are a good storyteller you've taken an audience on a journey so you've started off with the problem and you take them on a journey and I really like the concept of the hero's journey so google that if you've got time that's very interesting but the end should actually be the beginning and again look at people like TS Eliot who talks about the end and the beginning again really interesting you could talk all day but won't so make sure that your end is always always the beginning of what's next how do we develop and then the fifth and final thing is be a fire starter so I'm hoping that those of you like 90s musical understand that reference but if not there with me so throughout your presentation ignite tiny fires and ignite tiny fires in your audience so you're never going to get people to do what you want them to do unless you move them unless you emote them unless you start firing their belly either by challenging them showing them what could be and how they can do it and how you can help them do it but be a fire starter my last tip is actually related to starting fires and this is something that I've learned from years of working collectively with wider teams if you find that you've got a deck that's too big and too unwieldy excuse me burn it down don't be frightened to burn that deck down so that's my top five storytelling tips I hope you've enjoyed them if you've got any storytelling queries at all please come back to me can have the next five please that's me so if you scan the qr code now that will take you to my LinkedIn feel free to stalk me you can look at what I've done how I've got to it'll take to all of collective stories hashtags and um Instagrams etc etc just challenge yourself if you are in FMCG now if you are an FMCG category development category management and you've got a story does it have a beginning a model and an end can we help you all pick it so that's me thank you so much for your time we're now going to move into a Q&A session so we've got just over half to take some questions okay yeah so I suppose this is a question for for Brita Helen or Vicky I know both of you have worked in universities and do various guest lectures so are there any free resources that you could recommend in terms of finding new trends in marketing and and things that perhaps you might be using in your everyday life and you're probably more in that stuff than I am at the moment I'll take this one um but I want to talk to you quickly about compost and compost heaps so in universities you have access to libraries and probably access to Intel, global data, market line, IBIS world you have a librarian attached to certainly um Bleed Beckett we have a librarian attached to our business school so contact your subject librarian and have a look at what they have and it may seem overwhelming because you've got access to this huge database but how we work at Collective Stories we've got what we call a compost heap and we find things that interest us and we put them on the compost heap and it's the writer Neil Gaiman who talks about put it in the heap it might not seem relevant now but it will grow and it will develop and it will become something so speak to your top tips, speak to your librarian, your subject librarian and then start accessing these subjects now, start accessing these databases now but write things down because something will grow from it Vicky, anything Todd? Yeah I guess so when I've worked on smaller I mean I'm fortunate when I worked on older they have huge resources in terms of data and insight and research but I think that kind of the things that I've done when I've worked on smaller brands and earlier in my career is just go and spend a day at the British Library because you then can get free access to lots of reports and almost any topic and usually very good quality up-to-date data so get yourself a British Library pass and have a great day trip to London and the other thing that I would say is just looking on LinkedIn because actually I learn stuff from LinkedIn every day people are posting great free content Helen is a fantastic person to follow she shares lots of I love the Cantal one from today she shares lots of great research reports that she's found and insight and nuggets of information so find some people to follow on LinkedIn that are in your area of interest or your category and follow them you can get really easy by-sized information I think that way that's easy to keep the grown-up Facebook of LinkedIn is it certainly is the grown-up Facebook that's such a good description and just expanding on from what Vicky said so I follow I just one recommendation for you I love Cindy Gallup I love Cindy Gallup on LinkedIn she always puts really good stuff on join groups you know make sure that you follow in the right hashtags and I'm definitely not a social media expert but find people you are you know just ask and have a curiosity Vicky you know I think the biggest thing we've got in common is curiosity and we're not finished so yeah Johnny I hope we've answered that yeah thank you both next question is about when you're looking for your job and you're basically encouraged as one of you encouraged listeners to apply for positions to fill your gaps in experience but obviously that's quite a challenge if you don't have the experience and you lack that and particularly for those that are probably moving from university into their first real job I hope nobody's taking any offence and saying Whitburn's real job and so what kind of guidance and advice can you give around that because obviously if you haven't got the experience how do you sell yourself when it comes to a recruitment process yeah I mean I think one of the things I would say is that which kind of alludes a bit to what I talked about is don't let other people set your limits for you because actually most jobs are around demonstrating competencies rather than experience so they might ask for experience but what they want to know is that you can do the job so I would think about when you look at a job think about how can you demonstrate that you can do that and think about what you can send in like I talked about the radio example I've applied for a few jobs like that where you can send something in that's creative and disruptive in terms of UCV and demonstrates you can do the job how can you talk about stuff that you've done whether it's on your course or things that you've done voluntarily or you know if you are kind of coaching a sports team or something like that how can you draw in a creative and punchy way draw some parallels between the stuff I talked about if you're applying for a band management job those things that you need to be able to do show how you show how you can do that so I think it's about demonstrating competencies and demonstrating passion and tenacity which I think has what's got me most of my jobs because you know people can see that you care about it and you're going to make it work on a practical side it's probably just about doing some some work experience I mean I I did plenty of free work experience when I was early in my career in various places and actually even now one of when you if you can get into an entry level job in most of the jobs I've done I've taken on extra responsibilities I've put my hand up for projects uh volunteered for things I've asked if I can shadow people in other departments I've asked if I can be involved in projects outside of my job that I wasn't getting paid for and I wasn't necessarily getting any credit for but it's meant I can put those things on my cv and it's meant that I've got demonstrable experience then of doing them so there's probably just thinking about all the things in your life that you do whether it's your course or or your outside interests and how they can demonstrate the right competencies and how you can use that in applications and getting some work experience and not being snobby about your first job just getting a job and thinking about how you can put your hand up for and and get involved in projects that help you then get the experience that you need I don't know if you've had the time. As you were saying that I was like absolutely and do you know what I think for FMCG because let's not forget how much I love FMCG and the kill of FMCG. I worked in Morrison's as a 16 year old and as in in boots and different shops. If you're working in a retail environment now you are in FMCG so look around you look at the loyalty cards that people are handing over look at the way the shoppers are shopping so I was in the morrisons that I actually worked in the other day and they've refitted it and I was in there for three hours because I was taking photographs I was looking at the shelves and how they built this new wellness section you know they've got some wooden shelving in there so be present in your environment and use that on your CV if you're considering a career in FMCG go into stores and look at what's happening tune out the noise and just look around you and then a top tip I wanted to revisit that Vicki actually said earlier was keeping your CV up today your CV is never is never never stop I amend mine all the time and if somebody says to me can I see your CV which does happen I've got it ready to send and I think that is so important look at your CV back fill the gaps identify any strengths and keep that as your framework I think that really helps to focus thank you somebody asked that we've obviously got a fan somebody asked if we're recording the session yet we are it's going to be available on the YouTube channel and also on the Graduate Gateway web page on CIM web page so I'm glad somebody wants to revisit that we've got a question about category management so actually from somebody I know I hope you're well Eloise category management sounds really interesting what kind of companies or business would you find a category manager would it be an agency or literally within a supermarket team or something else so it's it's really simple it's neither of those it's within a supplier so no retailer makes every product that's on their shelves so every every retailer will have a lemonade supplier a tomato supplier a toilet roll supplier everything comes from somewhere so you want to be looking at businesses like Unilever like Arla like PNG but also let's not forget the smaller suppliers which is where I started out and that's my absolute heartland so smaller suppliers to retailers work out who they are you know that's a simple googleable thing to do speak to recruiters speak about FMCG suppliers that's where you will find the biggest category management opportunities Vicky do you want to add anything to that yeah I mean and I think it's like there are like it working as a buyer or starting at that kind of level in in actual supermarkets and retailers is a good way into category management because while you need to sort of develop slightly different skills actually that gives you you know like Helen took you then in you're in the thick of it and you're seeing that stuff and you're seeing what's happening so that can be a routine but I think I mean I think category management is something that I never even knew it existed to be honest until I moved into FMCG and it's such an interesting role and career and I think you know Helen does proposes herself a bit of a disservice because I think she's much more than it's all the stuff she talked about but it's actually about being a great researcher being great at insight understanding product development understanding brands and marketing because you're you know you're essentially you're essentially helping retailers understand how to categorise their stores and where to put products and what the criteria should be for which products go in and don't go on and basically you know category managers are the gatekeepers for we had a bit of a debate about who should go first because we're saying just brand go first he'd rather rather actually like you know category management is the gatekeeper for what products are actually going to get listed and also even the businesses like Arla they're the gatekeeper for for what's going to be prioritised in terms of the the brands and products that are being sold because it should be led by what you're going to get listings for and sell essentially. Come into the doors and open your eyes going to boots for example and how you'll see so much category management in evidence in boots so the big um sorry I forgot this is national I was teaching students again but going to a large boot store and have a look at the way they've grouped products together it's so interesting and it's evolving post pandemic phenomenally so you know buckle up this is going to be even more exciting Do you have another question have we got time? Yeah yeah of course um we've got a question from somebody who said that they have written with a degree in psychology they obtained that back in 2009 and they're currently finishing their level for professional marketing and digital professional marketing with CIM well done um they want to know yep I thought yeah it's a good plug for CIM but I thought psychology and and a CIM qualification would be a really good blend but they're asking how to get into the world of marketing they're excited by it and they'd love to get a pointer where do you start? Well I think I mean we've kind of covered it to an extent I think I mean I think that's that is kind of it's looking I think I mean the best thing to do is to think about the kinds of brands that interest you and that you would like to work on all the kinds of categories that you'd like to work on and write to them because um as you as you sort of said when you kind of going into a recruitment process with like hundreds of other I mean we use have hundreds of applications for our graduate program at all it's very difficult to stand out but actually if you get a letter from someone that says look I love your brand and I'm I'm so interested in it and this is something I've observed and this is something if I was working on it this is something I'd look at which I did get somebody do once I interviewed them and they got the job because you kind of want someone that's showing that genuine passion in your brand that you've got that and that you think might see something different and do something differently so I think kind of thinking about who you want to work from why you want to work for them and then actually doing some direct approaches it's good advice and or trying to get work experience in those businesses so that you can get a bit of experience upon your CV um but but yeah kind of what we talked about I think before it's you know not being afraid to take a role that might not be ideal but it's going to start to help you build the right competencies or thinking about competencies that you've got that translate and how it gives you an if you've got a degree in psychology I think thinking about how you can position yourself as um how that insight and understanding consumers and consumer behaviours and motivations is the absolute like critical for me sort of part of marketing um I think you know you can show how you potentially have an advantage in that area through through your degree and the work you've done so I'd be thinking about how you can talk about that and demonstrate that I certainly have in the past particularly try to recruit psychology students because it's quite useful particularly if you've not got a big budget for doing consumer research in terms of that background so sorry Hel. I think it's absolutely I'm really passionate about you know my degree was business not marketing it didn't really touch on marketing that much and I think that your first degree or your first qualifications they complement each other but you don't have to follow a traditional marketing issue because there isn't one and like Vicky said as long as you can show the spark the passion the enthusiasm that's what will get you further ahead on your journey follow the brands like Vicky said that you like that you admire and be able to talk passionately about them have a little moons a Collin and Cuthbert a sustainable feminine hygiene outdoorables anchor have these brands that these stories that you love and have them ready to go have you seen what Collin's done now have you seen what's happening with this this is trending on tiktok you need to have that natural curiosity because let's be realistic the jobs won't get handed till you have to go out and you have to constantly chip away it isn't easy and I massively feel for you know people starting out but isn't it exciting that you've got all of these things to go for so just keep going don't give up and find mentors so if you look at CIM you know lots of mentors available there find people who challenge you who make you accountable so a little tip for me thank you um we've got a question from somebody who's in their first year of business management degree they're keen to pursue a career in digital marketing so Helen you just sort of touched on this a little bit but do they do you recommend doing a CIM qualification well um I working for CIM obviously would I'm very biased but we are seeing lots of business students we've just had a psychology student now who's given an example of doing a CIM qualification Helen and Vicky have both done their CIM qualifications and I think it was Vicky who touched on earlier about CIM qualifications basically giving you a practical application in order to take those sort of skills and tools into your into your roles so any sort of academic achievement you have can be complemented by a CIM qualification but is there anything Helen or Vicky you want to add to that? I'm not finished you know I'm still studying now for another qualification and I find that you're the kind of person that thinks you need that so that's one train of school of thought if you want qualifications if you want to do that fantastic and I think CIM is the great place to do a digital qualification by the same token don't beat yourself up if that's not for you you can still access CIM content and thought leadership you know I actually came to a conclusion in the other day I thought actually I'm not sure I will study again because you know I'm running a business I'm teaching I've got a life um you know and so I thought maybe I have come to the end of that learning journey but I thought I'll still keep going on the non-traditional routes through CIM so mentoring things like that so it just depends what you're you want to get out of it a qualification alone will not get you where you need to go you have to have the mindset and the passion to get there Vicky anything to add yeah I may I totally agree I mean I've already talked about why I think CIM I like I say I don't particularly look at whether even though I've got two marketing degrees I'm more interested in whether somebody's done something like CIM because I think it's more practical if somebody is at the beginning of their you know their career if I'm trying to recruit someone who hasn't got any experience doesn't have any work experience then that's perhaps when I would look more at their qualifications and particularly I'd be interested in whether they have a CIM qualification because I think they've got half a chance of actually being able to do the job because it's about practical application I think if you're further if you're later in your career like Helen and I old timers I think then it's a different thing so I think that doing some of those we I'm the same we both still do qualifications and learning but I'm not really doing that to get a job so that I think people stop looking at your qualifications when you get to your sort of second or third job it's more that what gets you through the door but my motivations are different is because I just want to get better at what I do or there's areas that are new or that I'm interested in and I'm doing it for myself and my own development to make me a different marketer so I think if it's about getting a job I think that CIM qualifications are really good when you're early in your career I would did you say digital yes yeah I would just say about digital as I would be this is something I've got a bit of a bugbear about I would be really cautious about specialising in digital marketing really early in your career because to be honest in my opinion there's such thing as digital marketing because marketing is not communications communications is one part of marketing and digital is one part of communications and I think if you specialise in digital communications too early in your career you end up then only ever being able to work in communications and probably for agencies and in digital communications potentially I would really encourage people to do broader marketing roles and understand what marketing is about in its entirety and then if you decide you want to specialise in an area of marketing whether that be communications or digital communications or product development an NPD which I know Helen has a really strong background in doing previously if you want to specialise in an area then do it then but just I wouldn't do that too early in your career I don't think there's any harm doing in qualification and it's a to sort of boost your knowledge in that area because people it's an area people are interested in but if you you know if you want to work in a brand management role for example for an FMC chief business I mean you're never going to be doing that you'll they need somebody who can who can manage the brand and you're going to have agencies doing your digital marketing so so yeah do it as it depends what your motivation is exactly to what Helen said it depends a bit what your motivations are just to add to that as we were talking Vicky I thought I thought back to what you said earlier in the presentation I think that the digital qualification would be really good to do if you are working not necessarily in digital but to add to your skills so Vicky and I studied independently whilst working with CIM and that was what was great about it at the time I studied mine at night at Leeds Metropolitan University all those years ago and Vicky you did the same with your degree and but I was working at the same time so it felt like two streams pushing together what I would say is if you're coming out of uni and you're going straight into another qualification you need to be still thinking about work experience it's enrichment all the time it's not one or the other it has to be both yeah so I agree can I just just touching on that point because we have got another question around whether to go into digital marketing because somebody's basically saying that they're coming from an international management degree but they are interesting getting into marketing and and they're basically saying that because they've begun an online course in digital marketing because they haven't got work experience is that a good idea I would say that any course is brilliant and certainly can open doors giving new skills and it definitely looks good on the CV as well but in terms of work experience there's no substitute for that and doing any course unless it's got a really practical element where you're working on a project that's being given by an employer you're not going to get that work experience so it depends which line of work you want to go into of course but just touching on Helen and Vicky's point there about having that traditional marketing skills set and those qualifications to back it up as well as digital if you want to complement that are you talking from an FMCG perspective or would you say that that is across the market I mean I personally think it's across the market I think that if you if you if as with the way that see I am teach it marketing is not communications that's a part of marketing I think digital community I think the problem is is that in another few years time all communications is going to be digital because every channel is going to be digitalised so then what a digital you know I just think that communications is a discipline there are really specific elements of communication that are digital and if you want to be a social media manager or you want to work particularly in SEO or an area like that that's specialist then you absolutely need to have specialist digital knowledge which you know I don't have I would I would employ somebody to do that stuff for me that's what you want to do absolutely they're the kinds of qualifications that you need to do to be able to specialise in that area and be good at it because those people are specialists and it's all I'm saying is it's really about thinking about where you want to take your career because if you specialise too early it could just potentially be limiting for you and I think you do get as I talked about with my career you quickly get put in a box so if all your experiences in in one very specialised discipline of marketing it'll be very difficult for you to to get into senior roles or or or expand your you know it'll be very difficult to go from that kind of role to a marketing director or a brand manager role because you're only doing a part of the puzzle so it's not that it's a good or a bad thing it's just about I would be wary about it's a specialism and I'd be wary about specialising too early in my career I suppose is the point that I'm making but if you're absolutely sure that's the specialism you want to work in then go for your life you are a student challenge your motivation for doing it and speak to your tutors and see what they think of it if you are working speak to your manager as part of your development plan you know will they fund it will they support you to do it will they give you time off will they you know I don't know give you other encouragement to do it so it has to be for something that's my recommendation for any further learning it has to be part of a plan for digital marketing you know sometimes it can feel like if you don't have that qualification you're being left behind but actually you can demonstrate digital skills from other CIM activities I certainly do I don't have a digital marketing qualification we were still using dial-up when I studied so yeah it's a fair point and I think there may be a misconception that when you graduate you stop learning and you certainly do continue to do CPD continue professional development and there's lots of short courses some are free some are costly some have accreditations attached to them and I would certainly encourage anybody who is going into marketing or any any profession to to continue down that pathway so next question we've got is around websites and apps but there's any that you can recommend to be updated in terms of marketing news latest campaigns etc and we'll see CIM is exactly that kind of resource we are custodians and producers of lots of marketing content and news we work across all sectors and where the with the official body for marketing so it's no surprise that we churn out lots of rich content and on the next slide and the QR code that I put on there really is the CIM newsletter which is a really good free way to keep up to date with what's happening particularly whilst whilst you're studying but also if you want to take that a little bit further you could become a CIM member and if you're studying at the moment whether you're a student at university or considering doing a CIM qualification for £65 you can you can get access to a plethora of resources but Helen Vicki I'm sure there's three things out there and are there any apps or websites you want to plug um well I I really enjoy a catalyst to come through which is the CIM magazine I do use that a lot and I've put stuff on Instagram about it it's very interesting and I'm a bit retro I get the print copy I get a glass of wine and I sit down on that I really enjoy reading it and that's I'm very candid that's that's the honest truth um but I I really like there's one called cam city which is KAM city as it light leads um and there's a lot of free content on there um that I use for FMCG um I follow Canta, IRI, Nielsen, Dunhumby, Necta360 on Instagram and you get snackable content on there so remember what I said about the compost heap I'll see something on Instagram that Necta360 put out which is really great content and I'll remember that you know I will sign up to their free webinars I will try and get into anything like that that I think is you know going to enrich my FMCG wider knowledge you you have to find your own apps and websites because not everything works for everybody but you'll find your own compost heap am I making sense of that compost but anyway Vicky I don't know that yeah I totally agree I think um the grocer campaign marketing week uh the drum those sorts of people are great to follow on LinkedIn and and and check out we've already talked about LinkedIn and like Helen said I think I think it's like particularly with LinkedIn following brands that you're interested in and sectors that you're interested in that'll give you inspiration following people like Simon Sinek, Mark Ritson, those kinds of people um Seth Goldwyn you know all these people on LinkedIn and they're constantly creating content and and putting free talks on YouTube and stuff that are that are really useful but I think there's not really a substitute for getting yourself out to store to be honest um I think you know you can look at you can read what people are doing on on the in articles or on apps but actually there's no substitute for getting yourself you should be looking at the different retailers and looking at what brands are doing and looking at what's up and what's being picked up and watching how people are buying them and and sort of seeing that and the same with marketing you know looking at you know TikTok you know all these kinds of like growing channels Facebook what are brands doing on these channels what you know how what are the things that cut through what are the things that stand out to you and engage with you and I don't think there's any kind of substitute for for just looking and learning um rather than listening to what other people are saying about what you should be doing chances are you're already doing a lot of it with the people you follow so follow people like Gymshark you know reddit go on to reddit and look for top 10 influencers top 10 FMCG brands you know you can get such a lot of information already out there and build a tweet deck so a tweet deck is where you follow the right influencers on marketing it's a Seth lilac people like that build a tweet deck and put different categories in it I found that incredibly useful um again compost um so yeah but spend time in store you know if you haven't been thrown out of a Wilkinson you've not made it in your career in my opinion you've had your phone confiscated or your phone toad's taken off yeah you've not made it me and Helen have been stopped quite a lot of taking pictures and retailers and told to leave the little pictures perhaps we can do another session later on how to avoid security guards and things like that we've got about three minutes left so probably time just for one more question any questions that are unanswered we'll um we'll share with the speakers and we'll try and get those back to you and thanks everybody for questions but so the last last question I'm going to ask Helen and Vicky is an important role of brand manager is to understand strategy and even devise a strategy um do you recommend or do you have any sort of separate strategy um for the p example um product strategy promotional strategy so you talked about brand but what about product strategy promotional strategy pricing um place strategy yeah I mean I think that's that is part so brand strategy for me the the structure is your what your object you have your commercial objectives you have your marketing objectives which is it's what are the consumer behaviour changes you need to make to to hit those commercial objectives who are you targeting your audience and in terms of their needs and desires in terms of your product your positioning and your positioning is the things that I talked about it's your it's the the need that you're meeting and the type of product you have and your codes and distinctive codes and assets then underneath that you have how are you going to make how are you going to get that consumer to buy that product hit those targets you have your for your four p's basically your pricing strategy your product your development product strategy and what your npd would be and what the rules are for your for your products in terms of the things that they need to do to to meet that proposition you have your communication strategy which is obviously marketing and and communications and your distribution strategy where are you going to be trying to sell your product and then you have your kpi and that is a marketing strategy so all those elements that you talked about a part of the marketing strategy it should be defined by the brand manager and all my brand strategies and all my marketing strategies have all that that is that's basically the structure that's what I develop that's what I do and that's what I do now for businesses I work that top bit out for them and then I tell them what their strategy needs to be to deliver you know against all those four p areas so it's part of the marketing strategy I would say rather than a separate thing. There's some templates on the CIM content hub for if you are just starting out with strategy and strategy building there's some quite good templates on CIM hub which will help you focus a little bit but I recommend a little bit of SOSTAC which is a smart insights concept if you go on to smart insights they've got I think they've got the most reputable strategies on there like a download and also I recommend the strategiser series yeah that's really good strategiser yeah so that's just that's all I can recommend because Vicky smashed that one. So we do have more questions as I mentioned we'll try and get those answered again another time perhaps an email or we can reach out to you another way but thank you everybody for for joining today thank you especially to Helen and Vicky for some really insightful presentations there and hanging around for Q&A and so I'd just like to say yeah thank you both and enjoy the rest of your day and here is that QR code I mentioned in case you were to subscribe and learn a little bit more about CIM