Almuni Diary - Brand Management
Stephanie Bitonti ‘04
Sr. Marketing Assistant – Dove Personal Wash
Unilever, Greenwich CT
7:30 am
Head to Grand Central to catch the train to Greenwich, CT. I usually grab my seat, skim through the paper, and then catch up on a couple emails and prep for the day during the 40 minute ride, or I just sleep.
9:30 am
I work on the Dove Personal Wash Brand Team. There are four of us on the team – my manager, two associates, and myself. We divide responsibilities by segment. For example, I mostly work on Bars, while the two associates work on Body Wash and Liquid Hand Wash, respectively. My manager looks over the entire category. We are all very busy, needless to say, but once a week we try to catch up for an informal breakfast to run through big news and get us prepped for the week at hand.
10:00 am
Brief the Integrated Agency Team on our new innovation for next year. During this time our partners from our media, promotions, PR, interactive and medical agencies all meet at our office in Greenwich and we present to them the current project, our target market, marketing and communication objectives, and any creative that has already been developed. We like to go out of our way to make this session inspiring and interactive, as the best results always begin with a great brief!
11:45 am
After the briefing I quickly meet w/ our Consumer Promotions Agency to review the first round of creative for a direct mail piece that we are pushing out at the end of the year.
12:30 pm
Lunch and Learn session to hear the results of focus groups about the perception of Dove w/ Hispanic women.
2:00 pm
Once a month we have our Brand Operating Team meeting, which bring my marketing team together w/ our cross functional colleagues in Sales, Operations, Supply Chain, and Finance to review the monthly P+L along w/ any other issues currently affecting the brand from an operations standpoint.
3:00 pm
Review packaging artwork for several promotional packs that will be shipping to Target in a few months. Timelines on these packs are always tight and they often come up opportunistically throughout the year.
3:30 pm
Skin Huddle in the Cafeteria w/ all other skin brand teams. Unilever is a huge global company, but most people don’t recognize us the way they would Proctor and Gamble or Kraft. Some of our skin brands include Caress, Axe, Suave, Qtips, and Vaseline. The Laundry and Skin teams currently sit in Greenwich, while our Foods are in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Hair and AP/Deo are in downtown Chicago. We also have Ice Cream brands – Breyer’s and Ben & Jerry’s! Skin Huddles are lead by our General Manager and we review the monthly results by brands, company initiatives, announcements and general Q&A.
4:00 pm
Get back to my desk and respond to as many emails as I can. Touch base w/ our media planner to let him know that the proposed media plan is approved.
4:15 pm
Finally get started on my monthly share report. Nielsen Market Shares drop once a month and they are one of the main ways we measure performance against our competitors. It’s my job to analyze shares and understand our growth or loss drivers. Not the most glamorous part of the job, but it is gratifying to see how programs you work on pay off in-market, or on the other hand, identify problems areas that need attention.
6:30 pm
Happy Hour in Greenwich to celebrate a co-worker’s promotion. We’ve got a great group of people working at Unilever and while we work hard during the day (and sometimes at night) we also like to have fun and enjoy each other’s company out of the office as well!
