What it takes to be a European marketing manager

pharmafile | January 20, 2009 | Feature | Business Services, Sales and Marketing |  Europe, brand manager, management, marketing, recruitment 

Moving from a country-specific marketing role to a European marketing role can open up a whole new career path and may provide you with the challenge that you need to revitalise your marketing career.

European marketing management requires you to broaden your mind and approach the whole marketing planning process in a more strategic and pragmatic way. The 'one size fits all' European marketing plan just doesn't exist, and you will need to get used to allowing slight adaptations to the overall strategy – and sometimes major changes to tactics at a country level – to maximise overall effectiveness.

Often there isn't a quick fix to issues, so you will need to be very patient and develop a more consultative approach to problem solving.

Keep it simple

The mantra you should follow at all times is: "Keep it simple". This should always guide the way you communicate to your key stakeholders.

You will need to constantly remind yourself to use simple English vocabulary, speak clearly and emphasise your pronunciation. This can be very challenging if you have a strong regional accent, but persevere. In extreme cases you may even benefit from one-on-one training from a professional voice coach. Strive to keep your written communication, particularly e-mails, grammatically simple. You may find it useful to ask one of your close European colleagues to review your important e-mail communications before they are sent out to a wider audience. Ask them what they remember as the key learning points or take-home message, as this will give you a good indication of how well your e-mail will be interpreted by your other European colleagues.

Using humour in your presentations is often a great ice breaker, but you will find that many of the jokes that have had your British audience 'rolling in the aisles' will literally get lost in translation. The worst feeling I have ever experienced is presenting to a large European audience at an international sales conference, dressed as a lion. I couldn't resist dropping lots of gags such as "let's PAWS [sic] for thought!" or "here is the MANE [sic] message!" The audience sat in complete silence as I watched the tumbleweed roll by.

I am not advocating being totally serious throughout your presentation and removing all the fun elements, but do think carefully about how your humour will be translated.

Brand planning for success

Whatever your approach is to brand planning, from throwing a pair of dice to forecast next years sales figures (this is my attempt at a joke by the way!), to actually developing a plan based on very thorough market segmentation, you will eventually need to convince the leadership team that your plan is the right one for the organisation to support.

I bet that you have witnessed brilliantly researched and constructed marketing plans that have been destroyed by your leadership team because the marketing manager didn't present the plan well on the day – or worse still, fairly weak plans brilliantly presented which have absolutely wowed your leadership team.

So learn from this experience and check your presentation has a logical story flow that is easy to understand. Find out some background on the decision makers within your audience and ask your colleagues who have already presented to them what they are likely to focus on. Understand what the organisational objectives are, and think carefully about how your brand plan can contribute to these overarching goals.

Keep your presentation simple and focused. Be mindful of the fact that most of your audience will probably not have an in-depth understanding of your therapy area; use very simple language to describe key areas of the plan such as the brand positioning so that you minimise the chance of being misinterpreted and challenged.

When the brand plan is finally approved you will start the most creative part of your role: campaign development. But before you jump straight in, take the time to review what is going on in the real world outside the office. Get out of your office and immerse yourself in the world of your customers.

Field visits are a necessity not an option

Try to conduct as many field visits as you can within a two to three week period at the beginning of any major new campaign development work – it is the best way to find out what is currently working. I have found that you really don't have to speak the native language, although it is obviously extremely beneficial if you can! The universal language is body language: you will see when a sales representative is actually engaging their customer; you will observe when they are closing the call using the final page of the sales aid; you can actually witness them hand over that leave piece you lovingly crafted for them.

I do insist, however, that the representatives that I go on field visits with can speak some English, so that I can review their objectives prior to the call and get a comprehensive debrief from them after the call.

Be aware, whenever you conduct a field visit in their country, that the country manager will also have an objective in mind. A few years ago when I first started my career as a European marketing manager, I carried out a number of field visits in a particular country and was constantly asking the representatives why they were not using any of the branding items that we had developed for them.

Their consistent response was that they had run out of stock. It was only when my much wiser colleague asked me if I had actually observed any of the sales representatives opening the boots of their cars to restock, that I realised they had been briefed to give me that response. The truth was borne out when, at the next European leadership team meeting, that same country manager asked for additional budget so they could purchase more branding items for their sales team.

European advertising campaign development

One of the most important lessons I have learned in my marketing career is to keep the key messages focused and short – I rarely deviate from a maximum of three key messages per brand.

I've found that rookie brand managers in particular frequently overestimate their customer's ability to recall key messages, and tend to make sales aids far too complicated.

It also pays to simplify your approach to developing advertising concepts. Never develop concepts just using your office based team – make sure you involve the local marketing managers and a select group of sales managers. In particular I highly recommend using an external multi-lingual facilitator whenever you approach a major piece of campaign development work with the European brand team.

Ask the facilitator to make the team really crystallise their thoughts, and try to develop a maximum of two or three words that summarise the brand promise. Always make sure that at least one of your chosen words is entirely unique to your brand and 'ownable'. Once you have agreed your words with the team brief the advertising agency to conceptualise these words with appropriate visuals and minimal copy.

Before market testing your concepts, set one major ground rule with the team, which is: if the customers do not spontaneously mention your chosen words during testing, go back to square one and change the concept – don't be tempted to modify a concept just because you or the agency personally like it.

To maintain standardisation it is very good practice for you to attend the first market research interview in each major country, so you can support the local marketing manager and help your market research team brief the market research company, particularly the person who is going to conduct the interviews.

The objective should always be to identify a very strong concept with strong copy that addresses an unmet customer need. It is this that will lead to a marketing campaign that will consistently test well across all the major markets on share of voice and key message recall measures.

An integral part of the campaign development process is regulatory approval which in European marketing can make or break a campaign.

Know the country codes of practice

At a bare minimum you should familiarise yourself with the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) Code of Practice on the Promotion of Medicines and the code of practice for the country you are based in.

But to really add value, make sure that you familiarise yourself with the individual countries' codes of practice by discussing these with your local marketing managers, in order to understand the subtle nuances within each country.

A hyperlinked list of all the latest versions of the National Codes of Practice for the Promotion of Medicines can be downloaded from the EFPIA website.

Understanding the Codes

An intricate understanding of the codes is essential when working with your agencies to develop European marketing materials, because you will need to negotiate with your regulatory colleagues at every step of the campaign development process.

If you can demonstrate that you understand the codes of practice you can often come to a compromise and agree a way forward for most countries – which may mean that you develop alternative executions of a particular page of the sales aid for countries that have different rules, rather than completely ditch the page entirely.

You will whoop for joy when you first see the approved European sales aid run off the colour printer, but don't be fooled – your job is far from over at this stage.

Translation versus adaptation

No matter how hard you strive to simplify your brand key messages, when they are finally translated from your finely crafted English, the local marketing managers will need to adapt them – which inevitably means adding more words to retain the original meaning.

You need to allow flexibility in adaptation, but ensure that what is finally produced hasn't lost the overall communication objective. The only way to guarantee this is to use translators who understand your therapy area, and use them to review first drafts of country adaptations so you can ensure they have kept the overall message and objective of each page.

You should always address deviations in copy with the local marketing manager at first draft copy stage – they won't thank you if you meddle with their campaign one hour before the sales aid is about to go to print.

It is always best practice to test sales aids in major markets so you can demonstrate that the sales flow works, as you will inevitably be faced with managers who do not like what you have produced. This is when you must maintain your confidence, as you will need to help the local marketing manager to defend every page that you have produced: Nothing can prepare you better than sales materials that have consistently tested well in their countries.

A good tip is to encourage your local marketing managers to involve influential sales managers and field training managers from their country in the sales flow testing so they can start the process of winning their support for the final campaign.

After the campaigns are completed the real hard work begins – briefing the sales managers and the sales teams. This can be a thankless task, but it is the most vital step in the campaign roll-out process.

Campaign roll-out

To successfully roll-out a campaign you need first to ensure that all the local marketing managers are confident in selling from the sales materials themselves, as they will be required to brief the sales team.

This learning process starts in the market research testing phase where you should insist that they take the lead on the sales flow testing with their customers and act as the sales representative for the testing.

Always brief the senior sales management team and field trainers yourself: it is always in these first roll-out stages that the difficult questions and major objections are first voiced.

You really need to show leadership and convince them that the campaign will work and, most importantly, give them the answers that they will subsequently need to convince their teams. The best sales aid workbooks are actually written after these meetings, as you can answer common questions that you would never have predicted if you wrote the workbook in parallel to sales aid development.

It is now finally time for you to step back a little, to allow the countries to carry out the roll-out – but don't get complacent. Always answer urgent questions from the countries promptly, and always ask yourself: "Will your answer benefit other countries?" If so, share it. However, if it is a sensitive subject don't share via email – pick up the phone.

When you are invited to attend important sales meetings, take a video camera and create a library of video assets for sharing key moments with other countries: your aim is to make people feel part of a bigger European organisation.

At these meetings collect examples of all the materials that the country has produced as everything you have in the European office will be electronic not printed.

You will find all these printed and video assets invaluable when you are asked to contribute to the European quarterly newsletter or the European sales conference.

Ultimately your campaign will be judged on one criterion alone: Does it help the representative to sell your brand? If you keep coming back to this core question, you won't go far wrong.

Brand performance management

Closely monitor in-country performance -develop simple key performance indicators that you can review monthly to ensure your brand is on track. Get in the habit of sending the country managers your views on their monthly sales performance, and if they clearly need help, offer it – don't wait to be asked. The best time to share best practice is when a country genuinely needs help.

Always provide a summary monthly report to all key stakeholders in all departments so they are clear on the European performance of your brand and understand the importance of their contribution. Keep a constant eye on daily sales and segment market shares for the major markets so that you can answer any questions that senior management may have.

Review all market research with your business intelligence manager and identify the key learning for each country. Always send the country managers your view on what the market research is showing – they may not always agree with your views but they will respect you for showing an interest in their country's performance.

Like many British natives, I had many preconceptions about my fellow 'Europeans', but I have learned that we all share a common desire to create successful brands. To be a good European brand manager you must spend time with your colleagues in their countries and develop a true European perspective.

I am just starting on that journey and it is both rewarding and challenging for me. If you are bored of your current country specific role and want to add a new dimension to your marketing career, I highly recommend you make the change to European brand management.

EUROPEAN MARKETING MANAGER: ESSENTIAL QUALITIES

* Great listening skills

* Expert facilitation skills

* A track record of accomplishments

* The ability to inspire others

* Self-assurance and confidence

* Realism but with a hint of pragmatism

* Strength to follow your convictions

* Integrity

* The ability to be supportive and guide others

Philip Haldar is senior brand manager EMEA, X-Ray Brands at GE Healthcare. To contact Philip e-mail: Philip.Haldar@ge.com