The power of marketing

Our enrichment programme for Sixth Form students continued this week when we welcomed Kerry Owens, Marketing Director at Pladis to talk about her career and share her experiences with the girls.

Pladis is a global leader in biscuits and confectionery, operating factories in 13 countries around the world. Pladis brands include: Ulker, the leading biscuits and confectionery brand in Turkey and the Middle East, McVitie’s, a leading biscuit brand in the UK and Europe, and Godiva, a leading international premium chocolate brand.

Kerry’s talk focussed on marketing and the role it plays within organisations. She spoke to the girls about the interaction marketing has with other key departments and discussed the skills set required to be successful in a marketing role. The girls were particularly interested by the videos Kerry played of her team discussing their roles and talking about what they enjoyed about working in marketing.

During the session the students were challenged to take part in an exercise where they considered a number of McVitie’s biscuit products, discussing when they might be consumed and by whom. It was interesting for them to understand that whilst they were all essentially the same product (chocolate and biscuit) the way they were presented and packaged made a huge difference in terms of their appeal to audiences. So, for example, "Thins" were picked up by the low fat market and the younger audience that like something lighter, as opposed to the more traditional appeal of a milk chocolate digestive.

The presentation ended with an opportunity for questions and the students eagerly obliged, seeking answers to a range of questions about marketing, competition/copying products, plastic packaging, sustainability and sugar. They also learnt the very important lesson that a Jaffa cake is indeed a cake and not a biscuit!

It was a hugely rewarding experience for the girls, enabling them to gain a real understanding of the power of marketing and how brands rely on marketing and communications campaigns to raise awareness and generate sales.