Marketing course advise needed!

Why not an MS in Marketing?

L.

I'm in the same boat, coming from a PR/light marketing background.

What I am hoping an MBA will do for me is round out my skillset to move into brand managment and prepare me for a higher level of leadership. I have decided on this route over a MS in marketing.

Is this a bad choice?

point taken.

which course do you suggest I follow if what I've written is what I want to follow.

My Strengths:
(a) Communication skiils
(b) Logical skills
(c) Influencing skills

was anyone here more on the brand management side of things? Can anyone speak to the relative strengths and weaknesses of each path, and certainly any insight into CPG brand mgmt vs service brand mgmt (i.e. amex centurion card )

Thanks for asking this question, rhyme! Since my eventual goal is to go into brand management, I would also love to hear experienced posters' thoughts on this!

my experience in BM is not at a traditional packaged goods company. i'm at a toy company which is decidedly different. but when i was in advertising, all of my clients were pkgd goods companies so i'm intimately familiar with what they do too.

honestly, some days i spend the whole day in meetings. with my engineers to figure out how we can make a product actually work. briefing my packaging team about a new line we're doing and need a new logo for. with my ad agency looking at storyboards for the launch of a new item. it's endless. i call them "beatings."

those days suck. you come back to your desk at 5, with your inbox waiting for you with 75 unread emails.

but other days, like today, you don't have any meetings. i should be writing a deck right now to introduce our sales team to a new children's tv property that we're doing the toys for. and then i have to review the moderator's report from a recent set of focus groups we did and provide the team with some recommendations. and then i have to do a data analysis of competitive sales data to see what trends i can glean about a new category we're thinking of entering.

hours? that's the best part. hours are awesome. for the most part, i work 8-6. i do take my laptop home to do emails (always tons of emails) but at my company we have half-day fridays so it's even better. some days i work late, but never later than 8. i almost never work weekends. and when i have to officially work (travel, attending a conference, etc.) then i get a comp day to take another day. it is certainly not expected that you work on the weekends.

of course, i don't get paid to work 100 hrs a week either, so that is obviously a drawback. pay is good but not amazing. i also get paid less than other BMs because i don't have an MBA but that's a different issue

what is my objective? wow that's an all-encompassing question. i build the brand. i know that sounds rather obtuse, but it's what i do. every part of the brand from product, to packaging, to communications, to managing the P&L, to working with sales to sell the product in to the trade, to making recommendations to senior management about how to increase our sku efficiency, to planning out our long-term brand strategy, and on and on. different brands have different areas of emphasis, of course. my current brands are both new launches so i don't have any POS analysis or damage control going on. it's all forward thinking.

does that help at all?

Thanks, rhyme! I found the post, but couldn't figure out a way to link to it directly, so here it is for anyone else considering brand management:

From Bulishona: