In the 20 years of my CPG Marketing career, I must have interviewed 1,000 people for the Assistant Brand Manager marketing job. I was lucky to have hired some of the best, who have gone on to have significant marketing careers, and I became notorious for asking for some of the toughest questions, some even bizarre. I always asked an analytical questions to see if they could piece together lots of data and tell a story that made sense. I’d ask a creative question to see if they had a certain flair and pride in the output. I’d ask a problem-solving question, some very hard, no real right answer, but I wanted to see how they think. Finally, I wanted to know that they had done something at a very high level–it didn’t matter what–but I wanted to know they could make it happy.
A marketing career is very challenging and competitive. At the entry-level role, only about 50% of Assistant Brand Managers will get promoted to Brand Manager. The percentages go down even more at each level.
Brand management career
On a classic brand management team, there are four key levels:
- Assistant Brand Manager
- Brand Manager
- Marketing Director or Group Marketing Director
- VP Marketing or CMO.
In simple terms, the Assistant Brand Manager role is about doing, analyzing, and sending signals you have leadership skills for the future.
At the Brand Manager level, it becomes about ownership and strategic thinking within your brand plan. Most Brand Managers are honestly a disaster with their first direct report and get better around the fifth report.
When you reach the Marketing Director role, it becomes more about managing and leading than about thinking and doing. To be great, you need to motivate your team’s greatness and let your best players do their absolute best.
And finally, at the CMO level, you must create your own vision, focus on your people to make them better and shine, drive the business results, and run the processes.
Entry level marketing roles
My advice to the new Assistant Brand Manager
The most eager first-time marketers want to change the world. The role is a reality check where you learn before you can run. Too many new marketers want to focus on strategy immediately, but the ABM is a “doing” role. You will be executing programs, analyzing results, and learning to be a project manager. Through the execution, send signals you can think and lead in the future.
- What separates the average from the great ones that get promoted? The best seem to figure out the right thing to do and then make it happen.
- Some figure out the right thing to do but struggle to work the system to make it happen.
- Others can work the system but forget to think about the right thing to do.
The Assistant Brand Manager role can feel frustrating. Many times, it will inhibit your creativity and even your ideas. Fight through it. It provides a foundation and discipline you will use throughout your career.
Assistant Brand Manager
Five success factors for Assistant Brand Managers
1. Turn data into analytical stories
The Assistant Brand Manager role starts with a ton of data with market share results, tracking scores, or test results. Look for patterns or data breaks, ask questions, and start putting together stories. The analytical stories show you know what it means, help sell recommendations and support the action you will take. Never give a data point without a story or a recommended action, or you risk letting someone else (your boss) take your data and decide.
2. Take action before being asked
On day one, your manager will set most of the projects for the Assistant Brand Manager. When you are new, it is comfortable to wait for your projects. But don’t get in the habit of waiting for someone to create your project list. As you mature, start to push your ideas into the system and create your project list. Start making smart decisions independently, and communicate those choices with your boss. Don’t ask permission, but tell them what you want to do and look for the head nod. Know what’s in your scope and align with your manager.
M A R K E T I N G B O O K
beloved brands
the playbook for how to create a brand your consumers will love
Covering every aspect of brand management, it is no wonder that our readers reach for Beloved Brands multiple times each week to guide them through the challenges of day-to-day brand management.
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But we won’t just leave you with ideas – we’ll show you how to turn them into action. Learn how to write a brand plan that everyone can follow, ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned and contributing to your brand’s success. We’ll walk you through the creative execution process, from writing an inspiring brief to making smart and breakthrough decisions.
And when it comes to analyzing your brand’s performance, we’ve got you covered. Our innovative methods will help you dive deep and uncover insights you never knew existed, giving you the knowledge you need to make the best decisions for your brand’s future.
But don’t just take our word for it – our Amazon reviews speak for themselves.
With over 85% of our customers giving us a glowing five-star rating and an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5.0, we know we’re doing something right. And with numerous weeks as the #1 bestseller in brand management, you can trust that we have the experience and expertise to help you succeed.
Ready to join the ranks of the Beloved Brands community? Order our book on Amazon, Rakuten Kobo, or Apple, and start your journey toward brand success today.
Take a read through our sample chapter on strategic thinking
85% give Beloved Brands a perfect 5-Star rating!
The cheat code for future brand leaders!
It is, without a doubt, the most practical book for those who want to follow brand management that I have ever read! Beloved Brands is written by a real, experienced marketeer for marketers. This book contains methodologies, tools, templates, and thought processes that Graham actually used and uses in his career.
I have Brand Love for Beloved Brands!
As a 24-year marketing veteran at a Fortune 100 company, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about building brands until I started following Graham on social media. Graham has an amazing gift of bringing to life the critical elements of brand building and management in a delightful, easy-to-understand way and includes numerous examples and case histories that turn theory into practical reality for the reader. His tools and templates throughout the book make it VERY easy for the reader to immediately apply the critical principles of brand management to build a brand that consumers will love for the long term.
Such a phenomenal book
I know other new brand managers who have used this to review their business and create annual brand strategy plans. Undeniably, Beloved Brands is phenomenal in concept and execution. I highly recommend this book.
3. Make it happen through others
Instead of just functionally managing the steps of the project, find ways to make each project better, faster, or deliver more significant results. You need to understand each critical milestones to hit and manage bottlenecks. Every marketer meets resistance; the best knock can down those resistance points.
Figure out the task with the longest completion time and the most important element, as both will impact the entire project. You will need to push people to get things done. It would be best if you found a bit of magic by inspiring people to give their best ideas, put in their best effort, and deliver their best work.
4. Speak out to challenge the strategy
The Assistant Brand Manager must stay on strategy. Show you are always thinking and feel confident in your strategic thoughts. Avoid just falling in love with an execution tactic not aligned with your brand’s strategy. Getting lost in your own “cool” projects is so easy. Ask the right questions. Challenge the strategy to make sure you understand. Silent marketers never last. Show you are always thinking and feel confident in your strategic thoughts.
5. Be accountable for your work
Accountability is the first stepping stone to ownership, which signals you are ready to be a Brand Manager. You have to find the right balance by motivating experts to give their best and knowing when to step in to avoid letting things slip or miss. Never allow your team to get stuck. Stay on top of timelines and lead your project teams. Be action-oriented and solution-focused. Be the communication hub for all team members, and keep your manager aware.
Marketing Careers
On a classic marketing team, there are four key levels:
- Assistant Brand Manager.
- Brand Manager.
- Marketing Director or Group Marketing Director.
- VP Marketing or CMO.
To illustrate, click to zoom in on the brand management career pathway.
Marketing Training
Our Beloved Brands Marketing Training program will make your team smarter.
If you are running a marketing team, you will always benefit from having a smarter team. When you invest in our marketing training program, you will help your team gain the marketing skills they need to succeed. As a result, you will see them make smarter decisions and produce exceptional work that drives business growth.
We’ll work with your team to help them learn more about the five core marketing skills: Strategic Thinking, Brand Positioning, Marketing Planning, Marketing Execution, and Brand Analytics. Most importantly, your marketers will learn new tools, concepts, and ideas to trigger new thinking. To help their skills, we get participants to take each tool on a test run. Then, we give feedback for them to keep improving.
Strategic Thinking:
Our marketing training teaches brand leaders how to ask tough strategic questions to slow everyone down and engage in debate of options to move forward. To start, you will be given various tools to approach strategy thoughtfully and analytically. Importantly, marketers need learn how to change brain speeds to move from a strategic thinker style to uncover what is holding back a brand, and onto an instinctual thinker style on marketing execution.
We introduce our Strategic ThinkBox, which allows marketers to interrogate their brand. Importantly, our ThinkBox pushes you to take a holistic look at the brand’s core strength, competitive landscape, tightness of the consumer bond, and business situation.
Brand Positioning:
Our brand positioning process teaches how to decide on the target market, consumer benefits, and reasons to believe. To start, you will learn to define the ideal consumer and frame the definition with their biggest needs, consumer insights, and their enemy. Then, we provide our benefit cheatsheets to help learn how to discover the functional benefits and emotional benefits that a brand can deliver. Importantly, marketers need to make a decision to try to stake out a unique space that is motivating to consumers and ownable to the brand.
Learn to use our brand idea tool and see how it helps to communicate the brand idea to everyone across the organization. Finally, marketers will learn how to take the brand positioning work and translate it into a brand concept, story, and credo.
Marketing Plans:
A marketing plan is a decision-making tool for how a brand will spend its limited resources. Moreover, the marketing plan communicates the expectations to everyone who works on the brand. Importantly, we teach marketers how to create the vision, purpose, goals, key issues, strategies, and marketing execution plans.
Learn how to write key issue questions and strategic statements that form the foundation of the marketing plan. In addition, our marketing training provides various marketing planning templates, including our one-page brand plan and ideal Marketing Plan presentation deck.
Marketing Execution:
Our marketing execution training starts with the concept of our Marketing PlayBox that matches up to the Strategic ThinkBox. To keep marketers on strategy throughout the execution stages, our Marketing PlayBox helps find in-the-box ideas that meet four dimensions: they are focused on our target, fit with the brand, deliver the message, and execute the strategy.
To start, we show how the creative brief sets up the PlayBox, serving as the bridge between the plan and execution. We go through the creative brief line-by line and give you examples of the best and worst. Importantly, you will learn to use our Creative Checklist to help make smarter decisions on creative communications. We will workshop you on how to give feedback to your agency based on the gaps you see in the checklist.
Learn to make media decisions that match your consumer’s purchase journey. We also provide a similar Innovation Checklist to compare innovation ideas.
Brand Analytics:
Our comprehensive brand analytics training teaches brand leaders how to lead a deep-dive business review. We outline the best analytical thinking so you can become a well-rounded marketer.
Learn to look at the marketplace, consumer analytics, channels of distribution, competitors, or other brands in their industry. And learn to assess the brand itself. Importantly, you will learn how marketing funnels can help assess the brand’s performance. We provide 64 analytical questions that marketers can ask of their brand. Finally, we show how to understand the financial performance indicators of the brand.
Take a look at our Marketing Skills assessment tool to see how you or your marketing team measure up.
For more information on our Beloved Brands Marketing Training programs, click below or email Graham Robertson at [email protected]
