I hope my blogs have given you an insight into a Marketer’s life at Reckitt Benckiser. I’ve really enjoyed telling you about my role and what makes it so exceptional for me, and many other Marketers’ here at RB. I’ve wanted to be a Brand Manager since I was 16 and now working at RB I’m so glad I made that choice. I wont lie, its not an easy ride, but its exciting and the rewards are so high when you get it right. You may not have heard of Reckitt Benckiser but you’ve certainly bought our brands. Take a chance and apply and in a few months we could be welcoming to work on a brand you currently use!

We want to give you a flavour of life at RB from many angles and different people’s perspectives so my time on the blog is up now and in a few days you’ll have a new set of bloggers to read about.

Best of luck in your careers and goodbye from me for now…

I would argue this month is the most important and exciting month for a Marketer working in Reckitt Benckiser.
1. I’m developing my Brand Plan for next year
2. I’m finalising all the marketing mix activities for my New Product (NPD) that’s launching into market this September

Every brand has a Brand Plan which is written a year ahead and it’s used as the ‘bible’ for how you manage and promote the brand for that year.

Brand Plans are written over a few weeks as it’s a lengthy process to collate and make sense of all the learnings, research and data at our disposal and requires much strategic thinking. Although its lead by the brand, it’s a team effort between Marketing and Sales because at Reckitt Benckiser brands and numbers are at the heart of our business so the starting point is agreeing what the financial target for the brand should be. This is decided through many rounds of what we call ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ forecasting. Marketing and Sales forecast what we believe we can deliver and we marry this up with the top down target we get from the CEO. The Brand Plan then tells you how to strategically deliver this target…and at RB the targets are never easy, but that’s what ensures we deliver strong growth year on year!

At the same time…
New product development (NPD) is the most exciting project for any marketeer as you launch a new innovation for your consumers with a variety of marketing mix activities. Im currently developing these new activities for Strepsils which include new TV advertising, in store promotions, new packaging, PR campaigns and much more.

Developing and executing an NPD launch is the sexy bit of marketing and is one of the biggest focus areas for us at Reckitt Benckiser because our brands are our most important assets. I feel so lucky to be managing a brand like Strepsils which is over 50 years old! The consumer trust that comes with that is priceless.

Look out for the Strepsils NPD in the peak sore throat season in November & December. Let me know what you think, there’s nothing more satisfying than positive feedback from your consumers, so I hope you like it!

Friends of mine who work in careers ranging from medicine to charity have asked how I feel ethically about working in such a large corporate organisation with a mission to make profit.
I say that I’m extremely proud because Reckitt Benckiser is unlike any other I know.
I don’t blame them for being curious about the corporate sector and its corporate responsibility practices, as you often hear bad press about large scale organisations’ social responsibility when it goes wrong.
But at Reckitt Benckiser, social responsibility is at the forefront our daily practices.
Our CEO, Bart Becht, actually visited the branch I work at to personally present Carbon 20, a new global initiative to reduce the carbon footprint of all our products.
For him to do this himself signals just how much RB will focus on the environment going forward.
It’s motivating because I can – and have to – participate in this in my day job.
Strepsils is the fastest growing global brand we have, so it’s critical we get on board. For example we have changed all our plastic external packaging to a more sustainable version as well as vetting all our suppliers to ensure they also comply by strict social responsibility guidelines.
In our office we even have 3 compartment bins, each of which we use to separate out paper, plastic and general waste. It’s made so easy for us to make a personal difference.
RB has been hosting an ongoing conversation about corporate social responsibility on LinkedIn and the Reckitt Benckiser Facebook page.

However, our social responsibility doesn’t just focus on the environment but also on charity.
Save The Children is our official charity and not only are there many opportunities to participate in fundraising initiatives but anyone in the business can suggest an activity where they fundraise and RB will match it!
A group of 61 employees have just returned from an amazing fundraising trek in the Himalayas for Save the Children in which they were also given the opportunity to help out at local schools projects.
Reckitt Benckiser is unlike any other large scale corporation I know in this respect and I’m extremely proud to be part of it.

I love watching The Apprentice, not only because it’s entertaining TV but because the challenges and skills tested are all in a day’s work at Reckitt Benckiser.

However I won’t say the calibre of people is the same! There’s no way you’d find anyone at RB not knowing their gross from their net profit. Here, the numbers are king and everyone, including marketing, uses the P&L as part of their daily language and there’s no excuse. I’m surprised Sir Alan Sugar let that one go!

The show has certainly kicked up a swell of discussion around it. On the Reckitt Benckiser Facebook page they are asking the question: “Were this year’s contenders really representative of the top young business people in the country – or were they as big a joke as Pants Man?

Edd, who Twitters for Reckitt Benckiser, said to winner Yasmina ”When you finish working for Sir Alan, if you want real job satisfaction and an engaging career apply to Reckitt Benckiser”!

I was hoping Kate Walsh would win it as she displayed great creative instinct and real leadership skills, having that talent of being able to motivate the team to want to do things rather than bulldoze the ideas through.

I think Yasmina could struggle at Reckitt Benckiser, as in marketing you’re the project lead every day and you’re not voted in so you have to get the best out of people constantly. I also think she could rub people up the wrong way (not to mention not knowing how her own business makes money!) What would help her however is her drive, competitiveness and willingness to say what she thinks, even if it’s not the popular thing.

I have a feeling Sir Alan Sugar would also enjoy the Reckitt Benckiser culture as he’s also not afraid to challenge and to put forward what he believes in.That’s one thing you can guarantee here, we’re not sheep and we employ people for what they bring to the business.

I love all the marketing tasks on the show, especially the one in the final where they had to create a new brand of chocolate. It captures most of the processes in marketing, but compressed into one day. Although things do happen too quickly here – 6 months can often feel like a day!

People have been quite sniffy about the show and dismissive of the candidates on LinkedIn . One person commented: “I really don’t think the group as a whole were representative of the top young talent that exists in the UK. However in saying that, they are probably representative of some of the younger people that exist in the UK. I thought the two finalists were quite good as a whole.” Yes, it is a TV show, but the candidate they are looking for has to be driven and bold and must aim to outperform – real the very qualities Reckitt Benckiser insist on.

I have to say that after the gruelling interview process, the final job sounds very dull! They should apply to Reckitt Benckiser, as here they’d get to put into practice all the fun tasks they did and they’d certainly never start as an apprentice – they’d be the real deal from day one.

You can find out whether you have what it takes to work at RB yourself – there’s a fun Virtual Career game on our jobs page where you get to see if you have what it takes to go from entry level right up to Senior Vice President!

Five years after going through the RB Graduate Assessment centre myself I participated as one of the Assessors yesterday. It felt odd being on the other end of the process but I thoroughly enjoyed it and it gives me great satisfaction to know I’ve inputted into this year’s intake.

We deliberated hard on a couple of the candidates (in this photo) but we found what we were looking for.

I have to say it really is a gruelling process for the candidates to get onto the RB grad scheme. Before this final RB assessment centre they all had to go through a telephone interview and previous assessment centre with our recruitment agency, and this day was very stretching.

From 9am to 5pm the day was back to back with a mixture of assessments, both group and individual exercises and interviews. Each exercise is designed to test a specific RB competency and the day is scheduled to allow all the assessors to see all the candidates to ensure a fair decision is made.

It’s critical that we get the highest possible calibre of graduates into the business as we are looking for our future senior leaders so expect to be really pushed!
If youre coming to an RB assessment centre my tips would be:

-Relax, it’s your time to shine and we want you to succeed, so don’t let nerves get the better of you.

-It’s a cliché but be yourself and act naturally. Its very obvious when candidates try to second guess what we are looking for and then ‘perform’ to deliver, and it always goes against them

-The harder you find it the better youre doing as we will keep challenging you to see how you perform under pressure. Take it as a compliment and thrive under the challenge. You shouldn’t find the day easy!

-Take each exercise as it comes and again, try not to second guess the competency being tested. Some candidates yesterday second guessed and then underperformed. It was a shame as had they not had this in the back of their mind they would have excelled

-You’ve worked hard and achieved a lot to get to this stage, enjoy it!