What You Need to Know: Brand Manager
“Why do we even exist? What made us great to begin with?” said Richard Dickson, Mattel’s then-COO about the company’s endeavour to revive Barbie, resulting in one of the decade’s most impactful pop culture moments.
Written by Valentine Fabre
Discover lesser-known jobs within the fashion and luxury industry with the new “What You Need to Know” series, and find your most suitable career path.
The proliferation of communication and shopping channels over the last two decades made the concept of “brand” central to fashion companies, whether they sell products or services. Overseeing the idea the brand manager, an executive responsible for ensuring that storytelling is consistent across a business's development, marketing and distribution phases to create a “universe” around it.
The exhaustive nature of the role requires an interest and penchant for content production, marketing and consumer behaviour. If that sounds like you, here is everything you need to know about this function.
What Will I Be Doing?
“Why do we even exist? What made us great to begin with?” said Richard Dickson, Mattel’s then-COO about the company’s endeavour to revive Barbie, resulting in one of the decade’s most impactful pop culture moments. This attitude illustrates the brand manager’s core responsibility: developing and ensuring consistent messaging across departments and channels, both digital and physical.
“The brand manager’s core responsibility is to develop and ensure consistent messaging across departments and channels, both digital and physical.”
The task involves market research and trend forecasting to inform brands’ marketing strategies, cement their image and make them distinctly recognisable. A branding team will then launch marketing campaigns and organise PR events like launch parties or collaborations. Finally, they will assess public sentiment and review the overall performance of their endeavours to ensure that key messaging is effective — or adjust it if necessary.
Where Would I Be Working?
Brand managers can work both in-house and for marketing agencies. In the case of the former, they would focus solely on one company and work in liaison with different departments within it. When it comes to agencies, the brand manager will likely work across a larger portfolio of clients, which could limit the scope of their responsibility as agencies offer different packages of services, or hire experts to work on specific cases.
How Do I Become a Brand Manager?
Marketing and analytical skills are necessary to become a brand manager. Since the role includes researching trends and ideating campaigns to foster a certain image, it is crucial to gain experience in those fields. Creativity then plays a part when creating unique marketing campaigns.
A degree in marketing will, of course, be highly valuable, but should be supported with additional professional and personal experience. This could include summer internships and personal projects such as volunteering for local brands and organisations’ marketing teams.
Discover other career paths directly at The Glowth Academy.