Every day brings a new challenge
"Every day, there's a new challenge to tackle. You could be drawing up a marketing plan for a new product, or creating a new piece of advertising. You could be finding ways to win a fierce price war. Equally, you could be washing people’s hair in a hairdresser's. That’s the fun of it."
Starting at Unilever brought with it a number of different emotions. I was excited, but I have to say also a little daunted – and I wasn’t sure exactly how much impact I'd be having on individual brands.
That question was soon answered. During one of my placements, I helped launch a new variant of Comfort – the Wild Pear & Ginko variant – and that was fascinating, not to mention involved. I helped look after the activation on a local level by arranging sponsorship, what's put up in stores, how the product's explained to customers, the PR plan, press coverage and so on. Then, as another of my placements, I spent six months in Paris at a hair innovation centre, where they develop our Sunsilk brand, and even spent time working in a hair dressing salon.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of working at Unilever is tackling what is a rapidly changing marketplace – and that’s where you have to be exceptionally adaptable. For instance, there was one product in the Comfort brand portfolio that wasn't making money either for us or our customers because of fierce price wars, so we had to bring the product back in and make it both viable and profitable.
The graduate programme can certainly be tough, but you're hired because of your high potential, so while there is a strong training programme to build up your skills, a lot is expected of you – and rightly so. That said, there are countless talented people here to turn to, and I was surprised by just how approachable senior management are, and how strong the team spirit is. Everyone's willing to share knowledge.
