Becoming a Brand Manager

Becoming a Brand Manager (Originally Posted: 03/25/2011)

I found this article inspiring, so I wanted to share it with you guys. I feel like his advice (or at least some variant of his advice) can be used by people in a variety of careers to get ahead.

Here are some of his tips:

"I always took on challenges other than my day to day marketing work," he says. "I took the jobs nobody else wanted."

Some projects rejected by others actually offer high visibility. "One of the things I seized was large sales conferences and meeting development. That provided me greater exposure to senior management. They saw the quality of my work."

"People don't pay any attention to how they write or speak, especially in public," Ziebell says. If you want to come across as professional, able, and knowledgeable, you have to know how to communicate.

Ziebell attributes much of his success within the company to the fact that he volunteered for and participated in so many cross-functional projects.

Working on a cross-functional team helps you to build a constituency within the company, gets your work exposed to other elements of the company so you become a known quantity, and earns you respect.

"You have to be cross-functional to demonstrate that you have more of a mind than just marketing," he says. "Fully understand how the business works and how the company makes money."