Brand manager - Knorr
"I joined Unilever 5 months ago as a brand manager in the Knorr team. After graduating from UMIST with a BSc Hons Management Science, I joined the Sainsbury's Graduate Scheme. In the three and a half years I was there, I picked up my CIM diploma and gained experience in several areas of marketing including 18 months in the advertising team. I was keen to keep learning and get experience in NPD and packaging development and where better to learn those things that in an FMCG environment. So when I was offered the chance to join Unilever and learn from world class maketeers and work on market leading brands, I didn't hesitate!
Unilever has all the processes and hierarchies that you'd expect from a big company, but you cannot help but be impressed by the sheer scale and power of this global organisation. For example, the way the company mobilised its supply chain, organised donation of food and money and supported individual volunteers in the aftermath of the Tsunami continues to make a real difference.
Working on the world's largest savoury snack certainly keeps me busy. There is a really competitive, entrepreneurial spirit in the team which is so energising. My role offers the perfect mix of the creative and the commercial - using intuition to understand where a market and its consumers are going, then digging into the data to back it up, using creativity to solve a problem in a way no other company can copy, and then avidly watching the sales to make sure you're making money out of it!
I think what makes the real difference in any company is the people. A colleague told me when I first started that "the friends you make at Unilever are friends for life" - and I can believe it. Its an incredibly friendly place to work - and great fun!
