Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

« Older Entries

A Night at the Oscars

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

OscarThis past Friday night, the RB US Marketing Team was wined and dined at our very own Household Marketing Awards (HMA’s) ceremony at the Morristown Museum in Morristown, NJ to celebrate a year of achievement across all of our brand teams.

 

Now I, and I am sure a number of you out there, tuned in to the 2010 Academy Awards on Sunday night; however, I can honestly tell you that after Friday night, watching similar events on television will never be the same again.

 

We all arrived at the front entrance decked out in our finest attire and were greeted by camera flashes and questions from 7 or 8 members of the paparazzi. Once we pushed our way through to the door, we met ceremony attendants on the red carpet who quickly took our coats and swept us over to be interviewed and photographed with “Joan Rivers” and “Howard Stern.”

 

Once we made it past the cameras and celebrity interviewers, we enjoyed drinks at a cocktail hour with music playing in the background while we awaited the beginning of the awards ceremony.

 

The ceremony was extremely entertaining, hosted by both “Ellen DeGeneres” and our GM of HH Marketing, Alexander Lacik.  The awards were fair and well deserved for all of the brands.  Lysol won best copy for its recent H1N1 TV copy featuring our very own Joe Rubino, Lysol Microbiologist and R&D Director. While each brand team is generally familiar with what the others are doing with their media, NPDs and EPDs and various campaigns, seeing the nominations for the various awards gave us real insight into everything our many brand counterparts take pride in doing on a daily basis and the successes they have achieved, and I believe that the ceremony really brought us all together as ONE overall marketing team. 

 

After the ceremony, there was a fabulously-catered dinner awaiting us and an after-party with live music.

I thoroughly enjoyed the event and have to thank the planning committee, the event coordinators, the Morristown Museum and everyone else involved in making Friday such a memorable night.

 Who knew brand managers could become celebrities?

VN:F [1.8.1_1037]
Rating: 8.7/10 (3 votes cast)

Tags: , , ,
Read more | Comments (0)

The differences between marketing and sales departments

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

My name is Nicole. I have been working as a trainee here at Reckitt Benckiser in Brazil since July 2009. Being a trainee at RB is something really different from any other job I had before and completely different from the trainee programs in other big companies. This is mainly because our graduate program gives you exposure to two departments: marketing and sales/trade. Right from the start of your assignment you have responsibility and ownership of complex projects.

 

I have started in the sales department where I had to deliver 3 main projects in a period of six months:
1) build stronger partnership with golden stores attended by the indirect channel,
2) develop a tool to measure clients sell out and stock and finally
3) the Pharma GTM (Go To Market plan), for the brands which are not launched, yet.
Three strategically very important projects which had to be attractive for our sales team as well as our clients, but of course the client is always the king. 

 

Last month I started working in the marketing department and I am responsible for future launches of RB products. Also strategically important but in this case what matters most are our consumers and what they think or feel about our products. In the marketing department you are also responsible for the financials of your brand: the product GM (Gross Margin) and everything that impacts the cost of the product needs to be managed and tracked. 

Besides these differences both departments have also other specific characteristics. For example: the results in sales are very short term driven and you have monthly targets to achieve and are constantly evaluated. In marketing you tend to have longer term targets and in some cases you start to see first results after one year. Another clear difference between both areas is that most of decisions in marketing are made based on researches and official reports such as Nielsen, whereas in sales sometimes – because it is so difficult to measure results in the trade (one of the main reasons for it is that the market is too big, in Brazil we have more than 400.00 stores) – some decisions are made based on not only quantitative data (Nielsen), but also on more qualitative data delivered from our field team.

 

Clearly, there are much more differences between both areas but I believe those are the most important ones. All in all, having the opportunity to work on both sides is really good and important for one’s career. At the end of the program you will get a 360° view of the commercial area and the most important parts of the business. I can only recommend to joining Reckitt Benckiser´s trainee program.

There is lots of information and insights about our programs on the RB graduate jobs site.

VN:F [1.8.1_1037]
Rating: 6.5/10 (2 votes cast)

Tags: , , , ,
Read more | Comments (0)

Rock ’n’ Roll at the Point of Sale…

Friday, February 26th, 2010

…and how to make it happen.

 

Wikipedia says that “Rock ’n’ Roll is a genre of popular music…” To me this guy right here represents perfectly what Rock ’n’ Roll is all about:

 


 

 

Entertaining, talented, unique, powerful, impressive – Rock ‘n’ Roll.

 

I will never forget Jan 6th 2010. The store manager of one of my biggest stores in my sales area called me:
“Holger, we will make the deal you offered me three weeks ago.”
My first thought: “ROCK ‘N’ ROLL!”
During my first weeks at RB Michael, one of my colleagues, told me a saying. I don’t think you can translate it one by one but maybe you will get the meaning: “Mass sells mass.”
The meaning is: the more entertaining, unique, powerful and impressive your appearance at the point of sale (POS) is, the more you will sell.
And yes, by using these four words you see the connection to the dance-video on top. The last description of Rock ‘n’ Roll missing is “talented”. This you only get when you are able to sell highly talented products like ours at RB.

 

You might ask me to explain and describe what we did at this specific store but I am not able to put it into words. To really make you understand what I mean by talking about “Rock ‘n’ Roll at the POS”, you have to take a look at the pictures below.

 

 

Entertaining, talented, unique, powerful, impressive – Rock ‘n’ Roll.

 

And it is true. Customers buy more. They are entertained and they know that this impressive appearance goes along with very talented brands which stand for a high quality and unique products.

 

The secret behind this story is not really a secret. Why did the store manager order this huge amount of products at once? He understands how the business works. He knows how customer think. He is aware of the topic “Rock ‘n’ Roll at the POS”.
But in my eyes the key factor was trust. The buyer trusted me. He was sure that I would never sell him products which he would not be able to sell to his customers again.
Being a good salesman means in my eyes to be open minded, caring, understand a buyer’s needs, find a connection to him.

 

I am sure that everybody can be a good salesperson. The most important thing is to listen to a buyer’s needs. Find out if you are able to read needs.

 

Rock on…

VN:F [1.8.1_1037]
Rating: 9.5/10 (4 votes cast)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Read more | Comments (0)

I’m ready to rumble

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Being a Management Trainee at RB has been as exciting as a roller coaster ride!
I have worked on live projects in marketing, sales and trade marketing. And I have now completed my management trainee tenure and have been posted as Area Sales Manager of Karachi; one of the biggest cities in RB Pakistan.

For me it’s time for real action in a live role of Area Sales Manager. The stakes are high and so is my motivation level.
The management trainee program has equipped me to deal with all kinds of challenges that sales and marketing throw up. This is the beauty of the RB management trainee program – we get training in every function of the organisation which helps us to polish our marketing and sales skills.

It’s safe to say I am thoroughly enjoying my job.
It’s a managerial/ leadership position. And people management is one of the major components of my job. Apart from that I have to manage all operations at the distribution end.
Talk about empowerment and real action at RB. I am ready to rumble!

By the way:  until March 3 you can apply for the RB Graduate Program in Pakistan – job number KAR00E.

Good Luck!

VN:F [1.8.1_1037]
Rating: 6.5/10 (4 votes cast)

Tags: , , ,
Read more | Comments (0)

The Power of One has just begun

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

When I first started at RB back in July, our office layout was the stereotypical expanse of cubicles that one might expect in any larger corporation building.
I didn’t mind this so much, except for the fact that I am an extreme extrovert and get energized from interacting with others. Being in a cubicle behind 4 beige partitions hidden from the sunlight and the world is not my idea of an inspiring working environment. I also do not like interacting solely by email or phone, and in fact, I would find reasons to get in front of those with whom I was working, as I found that we were exponentially more productive and creative when we could interact in person.

 

The other challenge was that the people, both those on our immediate team and those on cross-functional teams, were not necessarily situated close to you, meaning that you would spend more time walking around the office than you wanted only to find that the person you needed wasn’t in his or her ‘cube’.

 

The RB management had clearly identified this issue as well, and had already initiated its “Power of One” plan to literally break down the walls separating co-workers and improve our productivity, thereby taking our company culture to the next level.

 

Just last week, our brand teams were relocated down a few floors as the company renovates our office space with a new open floor plan.
Our temporary “holding pen” has a similar, more open floor plan layout, allowing for more visibility of other people, more access to fellow team-mates and resources, and more overall productivity.
I am now sitting very close to all of my immediate team members, which makes everything from the asking of a question to the collaboration on a project that much quicker and simpler.

 

I have read before about the successful implementation of such floor plans leading to positive changes in advertising and social media agencies, so I am excited about what this “revolution” in the layout of our working environment will yield for us in the coming year.
As a strong believer in face-to-face interaction among colleagues, I suspect that this change will result in not only increased productivity but higher morale among RB employees.

VN:F [1.8.1_1037]
Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Tags: , , , , ,
Read more | Comments (0)

« Older Entries