Consumer Goods Marketing and Sales

So I have always been super passionate about FMCG, and if there is one person who has helped me channel this passion and take it to the next level, full credit would go to Swapnil Kumar, who took the FMCG Branding course at MICA. He's an IIM-L alumnus who started his career off with Unilever and now is the Global Brand Manager for Vaseline - he has spent time across Marketing and Sales and can be found here . This is a letter that he wrote for the incoming batch of MT's at Unilever a few years back. ------- Let me start by writing that this is not a definitive guide to what to choose and also what you shall get once u have made your mind up – given that u have to make your mind up right away. There is also a disclaimer attached that these are all points of view of what I have heard and the writer doesn’t necessarily subscribe to the points written hereafter. Even though I have spent more than 8 years in these streams I am not too sure if I have also experienced most of the th...

So this next post is written by Anupriya Singhal , who is currently the Regional Brand Manager for Lux South Asia with Unilever. She has worked with L'Oreal in the past (which is where I met her) and Heinz and GCPL across sales and marketing and has been kind enough to write on the blog - so do read! Its a brief introduction to marketing, what the function entails etc. She's written about what FMCG marketing is - do note that in a different market (Luxe etc), your job will be entirely different - would be more about aesthetics and the "glamour" so to speak. Comments and queries welcome, she follows the blog :) ---- Marketing has to be the most "Glamourised" job in a B-School. Continue to read this if you thought atleast 3 things about marketing from the list below: 1. Marketing is all about making ads 2. You launch a product every now and then 3. You meet the big stars and it is a very glamorous place to be in 4. Kotler has taught us everything about mark...

So after a super long hiatus, I am back to updating posts. This one is about trade marketing, an extremely vital part of marketing that most of us recent grads know nothing about (Other than random facts such as (“98% of purchase decisions are made at the Point of Purchase”). Swati is a Trade Marketing Manager with United Spirits (where in the absence of ATL, BTL becomes really important) and interned with me at L’Oreal. You can find her here ---- Trade Marketing is a marketing discipline that targets the ‘customer’ rather than a ‘consumer’. And your ‘customer’ could be anyone ranging from your ‘trade partners’ to your ‘shopper’. Trade Marketing revolves around creating value-propositions for both these entities to increase offtake. This could range from something as basic as a counter sales man incentive to something more shopper-focused like a promotional gift/price-off to display elements at point-of-purchase. Now you may ask - why would anyone have a marketing funct...