Ask not what a brand can do for you, but what you can do for a brand

Your attitude as Brand manager is important. Brand Management requires a long term perspective. Brand Managers come and go, but brands stay for ages. Everything you do, do it with a long term perspective, think not of how the brand will be when you move into another job, but how your work will help the next brand manager to continue its development.

This might seem obvious at first sight, but you will soon realize that there are a lot of initiatives that can bring a lot of additional revenue and market share on the short term, but end up jeopardinizing the brands future in the long term.

Not every growth is good growth.

Also, it’s important that you respect your brand. If you respect your brand, your organization will respect it too, and that is an important pre-requisite if you want to push a concrete agenda forward.

Ask yourself whether you can live to the expectations of the brand you are going to manage. Whether you will be able to identify with it and understand its consumers. If you want to be successful in your brand management job and achieve serious GROWTH, you need to “adopt your brand” as if it were your baby.

Most people say marketing is just a compendium of processes and techniques, independent of the brand or the category/market. I see marketing as a passion, as a consumer trying to sell to other consumers. It is not about copy-pasting strategies. Behind every strategy there needs to be a great understanding of the brand and the consumer. Love your brand, love your job and you will do good.

My ex-boss once asked me: Do you know what is the difference between Michael Schumacher and Ralph Schumacher? Well, Michael dreams about F1 and keeps on thinking about it when he is brushing his teeth in the morning. Ralph starts thinking about F1 when he gets to the circuit.

Good Morning Mr. Brand Manager!

posted by Ignacio Molins