Brand Management Options?
So I started to wonder this the other day while I looked around at different MBA's and what their career placements look like. While many of the MBA programs are now trying to get more and more students into consulting practices, I did see a lot of students who decided to go into marketing and brand management. From people who have have finished their MBA, of the people you know who went this field.... what do they do on a daily basis? What does a brand manager or someone in marketing at a place like Nestle do on a daily basis in his work? What type of exit opportunities are there/ how well can they move up the ranks of the company vs. someone in banking/ consulting/ sales coming in to fill executive based roles? How good is the compensation in comparison to banking/ consulting early in and later on in your career. I know this is a website dedicated to finance for the most part, so we don't talk about it much. Marketing is however, one of the areas a lot of consultants will lateral into if they want an exit opportunity.
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Brand management can be quite different from the image of marketing as mainly advertising. A brand manager may spend a lot of time looking at consumer research, sales performance, competitor activity, campaign results, pricing, packaging, and forecasts, then working with agencies and internal teams to decide what should happen next. At larger FMCG companies, there is also plenty of coordination across sales, finance, product and supply-chain teams.
The career path can be broad because the role develops a useful mix of commercial, analytical and communication skills. People can move towards category management, marketing leadership, strategy, innovation or broader general management roles. Agency-side brand strategy can also be relevant for someone who enjoys the positioning and creative side of the work. A firm such as The Studio of Possible sits around that intersection of strategy, brand, audience insight and growth, which is an interesting route for people who prefer solving brand and commercial problems rather than focusing purely on corporate finance.
Compensation varies considerably by company, level, location and bonus structure, so I would compare actual MBA placement reports and job offers rather than assuming banking or consulting always follows the same trajectory. The bigger distinction is probably the type of work you want to do day to day and whether you prefer ownership of a brand or project-based client work.
If you're extroverted and creative, brand management is a great option. A lot of thinking outside of the box. Some cool brands did hire on my MBA campus and the processes were probably as competitive as LDPs. One of our more successful alums started his career in brand management at one of the big players in the consumer space.
Brand management efinitely pays lower post MBA than most other roles including many LDPs but if it's an industry / brand you like, it can be a great opportunity. Classmate took a brand management internship / conversion to FT role over a higher paying / name-brand LDP internship offer he had.
Definitely not my cup of tea, I had probably the lowest marks in my required Marketing B-school class lol. Can't imagine how cringe I would be in a brand management interview.
I have no idea what people in marketing and brand management do but I'm sure you can find that out easily enough. On comp... Kellogg is the classic marketing and brand management school, so their published stats should give you a good idea of what marketing comp looks like. I would assume that the median Kellogg marketing grad is of the same overall caliber as the median Kellogg consulting or banking grad, whereas for some other schools maybe it is only the real hardos who end up at MBB or BB IB.
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time-mba/career-serv…
Median CPG salary of $128k and I'd assume bonuses are closer to 10-20% than anything like you'd see in even consulting, let alone banking. So maybe $150k total comp starting out (assuming full year bonus, not stub, and ignoring signing bonuses), vs MBB at $200k+ and BB IB at $300k+. And slower progression. The gap in both first-year comp and progression speed probably narrows some if you go into marketing for a tech company instead of a CPG though.
All in all doesn't seem like a bad career choice assuming you are aware of the tradeoffs.
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