Assent brand manager

“Corpocrisy in action”

Today we had our major brand plan presentations to the management team.

I put so much work into it, so much thought, so much analysis.  I’ve been in the office for 12-17 hours a day, plus four out of five weekends for the last few months.  I just feel I’ve worked sooooo hard, and when I told the Marketing Director I was in the office until 5am this morning, his only comment was “why?”.

And do you think he gave me any support when the key direction for the Brand was questioned?  I mean, it’s not as if I haven’t presented rationale after rationale for why we are headed in this direction in the past!  I warned them it would be hard and that it needed lots of investment and long-term commitment.  But all they saw was the initial big $ signs for Year 1 and an easy way to hit their bonuses.  And now, when it gets hard, they forget all the warnings and are questioning the core strategy they signed up to...

I know we’ve been thoroughly trained to avoid PowerPointing-the-audience-to-death, but has anything ever been signed-off at a meeting?

Target-setting – like trying to drive a car blindfolded, looking out of the rear window

hate setting targets.  I don’t know why they even bother to get Brand Managers to set their own targets, when all they do is change them to what they want anyway.

Today we presented all our estimates on sales for individual Brands – hours of work and thought had gone into the rationales.  The Sales and Marketing Directors basically just said, “No, that’s way too conservative”, and just change it.

Or, they’d come up with some bullshit sell-story as to why the Brand would do better – when all they’re really trying to do is meet the targets they’ve been set by Head Office.  Why don’t they just save us the work and give us our target in the first place, so we can get on with meeting it?!

At Uni, I really believed in zero-based budgets, and yet I have never seen it – this is my third role/company.

Why are large companies so in love with the status quo and business-as-usual?

Targets, again

So, at the start of the new financial year I was left with an unrealistic target of about 15% over.  And now, it’s the end of the first quarter and my Brand is 15% behind plan.  I have to go in and explain to the management team why my Brand is behind plan.

The gross unfairness of it all, is that I have to be seen to be supporting my boss; I can’t be seen to go in and say I didn’t agree with that target (and that, actually, this result proves I was right in the first place!).

Oh no – I will have to spend hours doing some analysis to say that competitor activity or trends, the weather, the Iraqi war, the vibe of the thing prove that there is certainly a valid reason why we have not hit target and that there is a good reason why we will make it up later in the year (bullshit, bullshit...).

And then next month, my marketing budget will be cut because my Brand is not achieving plan, making it even harder to hit the target that would never be hit in the first place!