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The differences in the world of a assistant brand manager and a brand manager | Alekhya Chakraborty, Brand Manager- Vivel, ITC | Unilever

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A fresh entrant into an organization as compared to a veteran, in the same department might share a common goal but their duties vary greatly. For example, everyone in the Marketing team has the common goal of selling more of their product. The ways through which they achieve this goal varies from brand to brand. There are many moving parts in achieving this goal. From packaging to advertisements to print media to product placements and so much more.

Alekhya Chakraborty, Brand Manager- Vivel, ITC | Unilever | Emami | MakeMyTrip, talks about how his span of responsibilities has changed as he has moved up the ladder. Over the past decade, Alekhya has worked his way up and has traversed all the rungs. He says that his role is less of execution now and is more strategy heavy. He is not making purchase orders or fine-tuning the artwork with the packaging agency. Instead, he is now working and thinking of Strategy.

He explains by saying that he is now strategizing in terms of where to take the brand next in terms of driving the top line and bottom line. The questions that he answers now are, How do I make the brand more efficient?

He then goes onto comparing the first 5 years of his career to the past 5 years. In the last 5 years he has to do a lot more thinking and less execution, he said. He goes on to share that a few Industry leaders who he thinks highly of, had already hinted towards this shift in roles. They also advised that you will get better as a marketer the more you are able to demarcate your responsibilities and get away from micromanaging.

Alekhya shares valuable advice by means of personal experience. He says when you see a person under you doing a task slower than what you think should be the speed, you will be tempted to get into it. He also says it is a very important skill in this line of work to steer clear of micromanaging and to focus on the main job. Right now which is to think and take the brand to the next level and kind of find out whitespaces where the brand can get into. There will always be more opportunities to grab and new ground to cover. For this, one needs to do more of execution and less of micromanaging.

He gets intimate by saying that it is a myth that we are great multi-taskers. Because we are not!

Especially in the busy world of marketing within the FMCG industry, the less multitasking and micromanaging you do the more you'll become better. Alekhya says that this is how he has evolved in the past 9 years.

He then goes back to answer the Brand Manager hierarchy bit of the questions. He says that initially he was the Assistant Brand Manager and now he is the Brand Manager. There were a few things that he did more in terms of specific responsibilities. These were managing artwork, all important packaging labels which consumer sees first. Day to day communication with the creative agency to craft creatives like posters, banners, dealer boards. Contrasting to what he does not as a Brand Manager. He now ensures that his Brand Executive and Assitant Brand Manager do the above-mentioned tasks efficiently.

He says that he thinks about taking the brand to the next level in terms of market share position. What are the new white spaces in terms of new variant launches? Where the Brand currently doesn’t exist. Is there a way to tweak in terms of how the brand speaks to the end consumer. How the brand is being perceived. Is there a way to make the communication sharper and more relevant to the end consumer. This he does more often now.

In conclusion, he says that these questions need to be answered as a Brand Manager and weren’t in his purview as an Assistant Brand Manager.

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D2C Admin

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MBA Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) B-School ITC Brand Management