While taking business anthropology, I spent an hour observing in the Apple Store of [University Name], to interpret the way a brand operating its marketing and sales, and contemplating on how Apple created a community of practice through its brand management, from the store decoration to the product itself. I was attracted by how people play different roles and form relationships in firms and it made me to think about my future - I aspire to be a marketing manager in FMCG and Internet industries.

This summer has been a catalyst for my goal, in the Bud Challenge, a competition that aiming to help Budweiser make brand strategic plan for increasing sales in take-away platform, I used Tableau and SPSS to realise data visualisation and questionnaire design to extract important data for making sales strategy more effectively. Ethnography approach learnt from my undergraduate courses allowed me to gain a comprehensive idea from the objects’ point of view by immersive observation, better identif key points. When I observed both the restaurants near my home and take-away platforms, I found that what people liked when sitting in restaurants was the beer with appropriate temperature and the atmosphere of drinking. Choosing the take-away platforms, people were more likely to purchase beers at late night and preferred to buy beers that could not usually be found in many restaurants. Based on our questionnaire and my observations, we ended up with several strategies for improving sales in online platform offering more beer types, improving packaging under a reasonable cost, and cooperating with more restaurants with long opening hours. From that moment, I knew my career path was ahead of me and I had to be prepared.

Strong leadership skills are the basic characteristic for a marketing manager to engage the multifunctional teams and complete plans perfectly. In a linguistic project about language use in British press, I led a team of 5 and took responsibility in research topic selection and delegation based on member’s background and preference. To ensure the project was completed on time, I made a weekly timeline and deadline for execution of plan. During the comment analysis, one of our group members was stuck with excess comments and felt frustrated. I solved that by talking with her and seeking more suitable and effective ways to motivate her. Finally, we had successfully delivered more than 10 different new reports and comments, and produced the report on time.

Since strong problem-solving skills with creativity are essential to succeed as a marketing manager, I use every chance to enhance them. Once, I have helped a friend make a marketing plan for a new laundry detergent’s sale with highlighting the selling point of long-lasting fragrance, affordable price, and portable packaging. Because the target customers were young female college students and new recruits, and they were usually pursuing fashion trend and scanning social media, I believe making promotion via self-made short videos with plots was a good way. I helped the team plan a video about a girl made a stunning transformation with confidence through video with dramatic ending for better drawing target consumers’ attention. People were impressed by this video with the sales increased from 6 to 40 in one day.

Good communication skills are also required as a market manager. In the Roland Berger Challenge, a teammate, Mengyu, and I were in charge of calculating the marketing size for A350 airbus flight from demand size. But Zhenhao, another teammate, questioned about our method and suggest calculating from with the supply side. Different opinion led to stagnation. I talked with him and found that he questioned because of his misunderstanding of process and inadequacy of supporting evidence. So, I explained that the marketing size could be calculated by multiplying the percentage of types, seats, and brand, and it could be estimated from demand size. Through communication, he understood and carried our plan out smoothly.

By reading Professor Reyck’s research article Operations Research: Broadcast Scheduling for Mobile Advertising, I have a new understanding of the concept of SMS advertising. This article focuses on the benefits of SMS advertising, such as better targeting of customers and markets, as well as making advertising as a passive scenario through customers’ own permission. As a manager, to understand the different market and marketing campaign are essential while making strategic decisions. However, from my own understanding, the degree of acceptance may be different according to regions. From the anthropological perspective of immersive observation in daily lives, I learnt from my own experience as a customer of receiving SMS ads, as well as interviewing people around me to get their thoughts. I can see that SMS advertising may not be a good way even though they can make permissions by ourselves. From observations, our phone often received some “spam” and they w make people to miss important information. And some websites also the “willing to receive” button more people m inadvertently make the agreement actually “permitted”.So, the distrust of businesses and matter of privacy led many people to be reluctant to subscribe to these SMS ads, and thus unable to cooperate the market to describe the actual preferences of different customers. In addition, it me new insights into the advertising campaign, and us a series of data in provid strong evidence for these arguments me to acquire more on business research during graduate study.

Aspired by Professor Reyck, I found the importance on deep understanding about the market. Besides, in my recent internship at Baidu, I was mainly responsible for monthly marketing trends collection and reporting, the innovation of marketing method enables brand to enhance its brand recognition in society and effectively prevent brand competition. [University Name] marketing report in CBN data enables me to better understand some of the marketing strategy. Currently, I found competitive differentiation is a main trend that struggled by brands. Ele.me is upgrading its brand and differentiate with its biggest competitor, Meituan. By cross-border corporation for impression, caring for sinking groups to create empathy and better transform the brand’s image, and also keeping up with current trends for planning promotion to keep the sense of freshness to users. It tries various ways but with no outstanding one, as a manager, it is crucial to understand market through actual data and make decision on innovative operations and strategies for the company. Therefore, I aspire to acquire more on decision analysis and strategy during graduate study.

What I find the most attractive about MSc Management in [University Name] is that it provides different pathways for students with different backgrounds, especially in the corporate pathway, allows cross-disciplinary student me to have a comprehensive study of management without too much pressure. Apart from that, I am also interested in the operations management and markets with customers as well as decision analysis methods in this course. These practical courses such as trategic roject anagement and rganisational ehaviour will enable me to to be prepared to achieve my goal as being a market manager. I am very much looking forward to meeting you and my colleagues next September in London.