[Applause] in today's video i'm going to explain the main skills needed to become a brand manager [Music] for context i joined png as a brand manager in 2020 with no previous experience so there were a lot of skills that i have to learn quickly on the job so i could be at par with other bms who had already been doing this for a while based on that experience i'm going to talk about these top three technical skills that i use the most in my day-to-day job i'll talk about the exact softwares that i use to do my day-to-day work and i'll also add resources on the screen and in the description that you can use to learn all of these skills especially if you're a student or if like me you're pivoting into brand for the first time if you're interviewing these are also the skills that companies will usually evaluate you on by the way stay till the end because i'll also quickly share the top three soft skills that the best brand managers have that deliver exceptional business results i've personally seen them get promoted to senior band levels within their companies really fast okay let's get started the first skill is building a commercial sense as a brand manager your main job is to manage your brand's p l and the yearly budgets of the brand you want your brand to grow every year and achieve specific profit targets and for that it's really important to have a basic understanding of the concepts of business if you study business in a levels or university then you will already know most of these concepts however if you don't come from a business background then i recommend these resources that you can check out to get a theoretical understanding of how business works i especially love the podcast how i built this because real business owners talk about how they built their businesses and you get an insight on their decisions behind the scenes once you understand these basics and you understand how different stakeholders can impact your business you can then start developing commercial sense a lot of it actually just comes from experience but for a beginner it is about learning to think critically about the outcomes of business decisions example questions you can ask yourself are if my brand has 1 million dollars to spend this year what kind of spending would give me the best returns what gaps exist in the market today that my competitors are not addressing how can i fill those gaps in a meaningful way that would help my brand grow in the right direction which products are bringing in the most money into the brand which products are bringing in the least what would happen if i discontinue the products that are bringing in the least money into the brand and reinvest that money into my best selling products instead how would that help me strategically how would that position me in the market versus my competitors so to summarize a lot of commercial sense is really just asking a lot of questions coming up with strategies thinking about the consequences and then just making the best possible decision with the information available to you also when you join a company you will be part of teams that will have senior managers directors and vps who will help you and guide you in this process the most important thing that you can do at brand manager level is really just ask a lot of questions like the ones i just shared and think about the commercial impact of your decisions number two business analysis and management as a new brand manager you will first be analyzing the health of your brand internally the metrics for this are things like market share sales and consumer opinion then externally you will be analyzing the market that your business operates in so this is market trends consumer trends and competition finally like i mentioned in the first point you will be managing the p l and budget of your brand so for all these things your best friends are going to be excel word and powerpoint all the brand sales and share data is stored in excel files same with the data on market trends and consumer trends it's an extremely valuable skill to know how to filter and extract data in excel the most commonly used excel functions i recommend you learn are pivot tables vlookups and sumifs this should allow you to do 90 of the work the best pms don't even use their mouse and actually just do excel using keyboard shortcuts i was definitely not the excel star in the bms but i could filter and extract all the information that i needed for my work there are a lot of youtube tutorials that you can watch to learn excel but i personally think that it's really boring to sit and listen to someone talk about excel instead i recommend that you just learn by practice so next time you're using excel do a quick google search to find a shortcut for whatever you're doing and implement that and you'll probably just get the hang of it once you analyze your data in excel you will then present it in a word document or a powerpoint deck what new brand managers usually struggle with is taking their data and insights and strategies and presenting it in a way that is easy to understand and looks really pretty like infographics and telling a compelling story a rule of thumb in these decks is to use a top-down format which is basically when you put the key message on top and you put all of the supporting information and findings at the bottom for infographics and data presentation i recommend these resources for points one and two besides microsoft office there really isn't any other industry standard software that you need to know for point three all companies have their own unique software that they require brand managers to use for example to login budget numbers at the end of the month for auditing purposes don't worry that software is unique to each company and they will train you on it when you join the final skill category is creative branding skills half your job as a brand manager is to manage the business and numbers and everything else that goes along with that the other half is to develop the brand itself so the story the values and the look of the brand this also includes overseeing all of the creation and adaptation of the marketing materials this includes things like social media ads digital banners billboards influencer collabs sponsorship and everything else basically that can be classified as marketing material as a brand manager often the ideas for these marketing campaigns is yours and then you will create it in collaboration with creative agencies media companies graphic designers and so on so you don't need to know these technical skills like photography or graphic design however there are a few skills i recommend you practice that will help you stand out the first is writing you will be writing a lot and in a lot of different styles for emails presentations briefs reports and then also writing creatively for ads packaging social media brand tag lines pr and so on it will help you stand out if you have excellent grammar and fluency in the business language and also the ability to write catchy slogans and tell a compelling story with your words in my experience the best thing is really just to read a lot both fiction and non-fiction i think the second best thing would probably just be listening to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts um and maybe even watching movies um basically anything that exposes you to the language slowly it will start sinking in and the way that you express yourself will just get better the second is a basic knowledge of graphic design this could be the adobe creative suite like photoshop more recently however i see more and more people use graphic design websites like canva this can come in handy if you want to create a quick product mockup or a quick graphic that you want to attach to a presentation or share with an agency that you're working with it's not necessary but it will just help you visualize your ideas better and also communicate them better on a similar note the third skill you can learn is creating mood boards i personally always created a mood board for any new campaign or a new marketing activation idea it helps visualize an identity and message and when you put pictures together to convey an idea i think it gives you and your team something visual that you can then discuss and improve and align on creating a mood board is pretty straightforward there are a lot of videos on this i'll leave some links below before i end this video i also want to share the top three non-technical soft skills that the best brand managers have they're great listeners this can apply on a bigger level like for example listening to your consumers in the market but it can also apply on a much more personal day-to-day level like just being a person who listens very carefully infinite meetings when you're presenting your plans the directors and vps are going to challenge you and your ideas and you're going to be required to think critically on your feet and you will only be able to do that if you listen really carefully to the concerns that they're raising um and then you'll be able to address it second they're great communicators that doesn't mean that you're super extroverted or loud it just means that you're a great conversationalist and people like you and they like talking to you you're polite you're respectful and you have interests outside of just work so you're able to talk about a lot of different topics this makes you come across as a well-rounded person and someone who has perspective and it also makes you come across as a people person and guess what the consumers that you're trying to sell to are also people they are initiators the nature of the role is setting and achieving ambitious profit targets it requires a person who loves a challenge thinks outside the box and is really motivated to take their brand to the next level so the best brand managers are all self-starters they are constantly brainstorming new and more interesting ways to grow their brand without being told to do so that's it on this topic i'd love to know what other topics you'd like me to cover comment below and let me know and also like and subscribe if you liked this video see you next week bye [Music] you