Sunday, December 26, 2010

To know the real world

As a brand manager you must know what happens in stores to be able to manage your job. You must know what kind of products, expos and displays that are liked by the customers and consumers, in other words you must be aware of the “real world”. If you do not know this, it is hard to come up with good ideas of new innovations or creative exposures. Of course, you can find many hard facts in different data systems and researches but a great complementary thing to do for finding this information is to partner up with a seller for a day, which I recently did.

Just before Christmas I car pooled with one of our skilled seller for a whole day. We visited some of the stores that he are responsible for and checked that everything was under control before the big Christmas-holiday. I once again, I realised that to experience how a regular day for a seller looks like makes me understand so much better what’s needed in-store. Even if I know many things before; to car pool is a great reminder of how things really are.

For lunch we meet some others sellers and they all have so many great ideas of how things can be developed and improved. We must never forget that they are the absolute best source of information about “the real” world. My goal is to partner up with different sellers for a few times a year. Each time it gives me so many new ideas and great inspiration, but it is so easy to forget in our everyday-life at the office. But in 2011 I have promised myself I will car pool more often (of course, if the sellers let me….).

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