Brand Manager

What is a Brand Manager?

The following job responsibilities are common for individuals in brand manager roles:

• Define a company’s brand by determining the desired effect of branding on consumers
• Define brand guidelines that designate typography, colors, imagery, and other design elements that support a company’s branding efforts
• Review advertising campaigns, marketing initiatives, and all communications to ensure that all meet established brand guidelines
• Conduct market research and A/B testing to determine the impression branding has on consumers
• Monitor trends and recommend branding shifts as needed

A Day in the Life

Brand managers are responsible for creating a positive association with a brand among consumers. Their role is cross-functional and requires touchpoints with several different core functional areas. For example, one role of the brand manager is to ensure all designs and communications adhere to established brand guidelines. The brand manager creates those guidelines by reviewing market research, conducting user experience testing, and performing A/B tests to refine brand elements.

Once brand guidelines are established, they’re distributed to development, design, and copywriting teams to use in creating standards, style guides, and best practices. Brand guidelines can impact colors used in communications, imagery employed, typography for text, and even content. The brand manager reviews all external communications—advertisements, press releases, website changes, marketing initiatives, and more—to ensure brand guidelines are adhered to and the right impression is delivered.

To perform the role effectively, brand managers spend a lot of their time researching and testing. They monitor brand impressions and collect feedback, and recommend shifts in brand guidelines when required. In some cases where brand opinion is overly negative, the brand manager may perform damage control, recommending renaming and/or rebranding in order to rebuild public opinion and reestablish a brand as a competitor in its industry, giving a company an opportunity to win back lost business.

Typical Work Schedule

Brand managers mostly follow the standard working hours of about 40 hours per week as the job is mainly office-based. However, in addition to attending regular meetings, it is also expected of the brand manager to spend many evenings and weekends travel to different locations in order to attend filming and photoshoots, to manage a new product launch or visit exhibitions and conferences to promote for the brand. Accordingly, the job may become demanding with much responsibility over the brand manager. You need to be ready to put longer hours, work on weekends or evenings to be able to give the brand the necessary competitive edge it needs to achieve its target and stand out among.

Projected Job Growth

According to the US bureau of labor statistics, the overall employment of brand managers and other branding related jobs is expected to increase by at least 6 % from 2019 to 2029 which is faster than the expectations for other jobs. Recent technological changes transformed the field of branding and changed the formats and platforms of communication making it a highly dynamic and competitive field. Currently, Internet-based advertisement has a huge edge over other traditional means of branding. Therefore, in addition to having the regular degrees, having a solid background about modern and digital technology and how to utilize that for the brand has recently became a necessary skill in the field.

Typical Employers

The most prominent and common employers for brand managers are marketing agencies, where you may be responsible for multiple brands for multiple clients. Accordingly, marketing agencies provide intensive experience and helps you build a solid portfolio. In addition, some large private companies, manufacturers and retailers may have a marketing department where branding managers are required to manage the company’s brands and make the branding consistent across multiple platforms. Some public organizations, charities and even political campaigns may hire a branding manager to manage their work and promote it. You may have the chance sometimes to work remotely and independently however, this is usually limited to working with small-businesses and individual clients and it may not be a good choice for fresh graduates who aim at gaining more experience.