Product Management/Marketing?

Does anyone have any information on the career path/transitioning to or from these types of roles? I found a few old posts on here related to them, but for the most part they appear to be fairly inconsistent. From what I could gather, they are more on the client facing and sales/marketing side of things.

If someone wanted to end up in one of these roles at a mutual fund or ETF shop, for example, would becoming an internal/external wholesaler be a good way to do so?

 

If your talking cpg they exclusively hire mbas. Your description of the role is generally correct. At the lower level you own a single product and as time goes on you manage larger peices of the portfolio. Generally think of yourself as a project manager, you aren't the expert in a specific function like sales finance or supply chain but you manage the business and generally make the decions on all aspects of the business in order to sell more or make more money. Some companies will have u focused more on pure marketing while others will treat you really like a project manager who gathers info from the team and then directs the action. It's a great life style, 45-55 hours forever and decent pay although not much of a curve. You'll never be rich but you'll never work crazy hours.

 

Thanks a lot to both for being willing to share information. I think my first question is whether or not it's even reasonable to break in if you don't have an engineering background or work in consulting/IB. For someone like me, how can I really stand apart without these qualifications? I don't think that the work is necessarily impossible for me to do, but I can understand how understanding the intricacies of a product (if I were an engineer for example) could be useful in order to market it.

 

Honestly I don't think you can break in from an engineering background without an MBA. At many of the top companies (including mine) post-MBA is entry-level, while at many others (P&G, Unilever) you pretty much have to get an MBA to move up. Also, they don't really value engineering skills much. As @"Goinggolfing" said, in some ways you're a project manager, working with ops, finance, etc to make sure the business is running smoothly, but brand management always is a marketing role. Because of this, marketing skills are what is valued, as you will directly be working on new product development (with R&D), pricing, advertising, promotion (coupons, etc), distribution, packaging, etc. That stuff is your direct responsibility, whereas production is something you coordinate with operations, and ops runs the day to day of the factory, procurement, etc.

If you go and get an MBA, you'll be pretty much as successful applying to these roles as anyone else. Almost everyone going into brand management post-MBA is a career switcher, so they don't really care as much what you did beforehand.

I would say that the divide is not so much project manager vs. pure marketing, but GM vs. pure marketing (which may be the same thing worded differently). Some companies tend to have their brand manager spend more time on advertising and promotion, while in most major CPGs he's involved in all the aspects of the business (like a mini-CEO).

 

That makes sense. Just to clarify, I am looking at an MBA, with the only hurdle being cost. If I can afford it, I probably will go.

I know you mentioned that they don't care too much about background post-MBA, but in my estimation, ceterus paribus, IB/Consulting experience would be more favorable to audit experience. Do you imagine there is something I can say as a CPA that may help my case or what skills may transfer? This way, if I'm serious about this, I can also look for more opportunities at work to develop these skills.

Additionally, do you think much of what you said also holds true for PM/BM roles at a tech company?

 

@"Lester Freamon" Your the role could vary depending on the company you work for ( i.e. Pepsi, Coca- Cola, General Mills, Campells Soup, P&G, Nestle, Kraft, Palmolive-Colgate, Dannon, etc.). You could specialize in certain types of products or markets such as food, personal care, etc.

As a Brand Manager you would plan the direction of all marketing activity on a campaign and would use your creativity to think of new and difference ways of delivering your message to the customer. You would analyze big market data from research and use this to think of ways to make your campaign more effective. At the end of each campaign you would work out how successful it had been and report this back to the higher ups.

 

In general yes the pay is better in PM roles than in Brand Manager roles (which are roughly the CPG equivalent). This is due to the fact that Tech as and industry is more profitable than CPG as an industry, so pay in almost all roles in Tech is higher than CPG, including finance, marketing, ops, etc. I'd say the average difference in pay (and it varies by level and company) between a tech PM role and a CPG BM role would be 20% or so. At a CPG right out of an MBA you're looking at about $105k base with $5-10k bonus, with tech it's usually $115k with a $15-25k bonus.

 

My experience is in working with Product Manager roles at 2 different F500 companies in different industries.

When I was in healthcare it was within the marketing function. Typical background was some sort of marketing, consulting or general management role. I think almost all had MBAs. I actually got an offer from the VP to lateral into this group from FP&A because we worked well together, but i took a promotion within Finance instead.

At the industrial company I'm at now it's a little different as the product is very specialized for technical uses. Because of that, the people in these roles are either engineers or ex-sales guys. These guys are really just an extension of sales, often in a more technical capacity.

I think the roles at my previous company were pretty interesting, but not my current company.

twitter: @CorpFin_Guy
 

I used to be at a F500 CPG - Brand Management is the way to C Suite. Most value both domestic and international experience. My company had 2 career tracks - promote up from undergrad roles and post-MBA hires. Lifers (aka those that joined straight from undergrad) are favored because they have embraced the kool-aid/don't rock the boat too much.

Salary and bonus estimates above are accurate. There are post-MBA signing bonuses.

Note that these jobs aren't 45 hr/week anymore (even the company with summer hours). There have been too many recent layoffs without real "reductions in complexity/work". That being said, you definitely put in less hours than my IB friends and tend to travel less than my consultant buddies.

Happy to answer questions.

 

Plenty of consultants become BMs or PMs and most do it after b school. Otherwise they do consulting for 3-5 years and come in as a manger.

One thing to think about is industry location. Cpg is generally in lower col areas (Cincinnati, Minneapolis, suburbs, etc) vs tech so your dollar goes further but you won't be in sf/ny generally.

Hours are not 45 if you want to succeed but 55 is very normal at least in cpg. This is the job work/life balance route from b school.

 

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