In this article, we delve into the figure of the Brand Specialist. For the occasion, we interviewed Giada D’Abruzzo, a professional working in the digital marketing sector for many years.
Brand Specialist: who is he?
The Brand Specialist is the person in charge of managing the brand of a company.
The recognition of this professional category came about when it was realized that extra profit could be generated through brand management. For example, a pair of shoes of a certain brand rather than another can generate a different value in terms of income.
What training did you do for the role of Brand Specialist?
Like all these new professions, and all those revolving around the digital world, there have started to be targeted university courses or even master’s degrees.
One can come to this profession coming from other directions as well because it is a very transversal profession and therefore there are many ways one can get there.
What characteristics should a Brand Specialist possess?
- Entrepreneurial skills
- Analysis and synthesis skills
- Must have a lot of creativity
- Must be alert to changes
Branding is always evolving, so the skill of a Brand Specialist lies in understanding the context in which he or she operates and also in trying to speed it up a bit, so let’s say there are those who started out doing branding from graphics, design, communication, big data analysis.
There are many ways you get there, maybe it’s more out of passion that you find yourself doing this job.
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Brand Specialist: in what kind of company do you mainly work?
A good Brand Specialist has to interact with all professional categories, then depending on the size of the company his role also changes.
Let’s say that initially, one can take care of brand management even starting from the pizzeria under one’s house and then maybe get there with experience and do it even with very large multinational companies.
Experience is the key in this sector. You have to deal with everyone a bit because brand management revolves around so many different categories:
- There is the Brand Identity and Corporate Identity part (find out what Corporate Identity is) where you have to understand what the company wants to communicate to the outside world;
- There is the Brand Awareness part, where through communication activities, you have to go and make the brand known in a certain way;
- There is the Branded Content part, where original content is produced;
- The image part, taken care of from time to time according to the product, does not always coincide with what is the corporate identity, sometimes it can even shift;
- Brand positioning also matters a lot, i.e. compared to other competitors, how to contextualize and which target group to focus on;
- Finally, one has to work on the issue of loyalty and equity, i.e., trying to build customer loyalty to the brand through a series of actions, and trying to make it unique from time to time.
One has to be very careful and try to communicate as much as possible with all parties because everyone can give an important piece of information.
How much does a Brand Specialist earn?
It depends not only on experience and curriculum vitae but also on the location, and the type of reality in which one is going to operate: statistics say that one is around 25,000 to 45,000 euros per year. More or less this is the standard.
It is obvious that when you start out you can settle for less or there are different types of contracts, but it is fair to expect a good salary for a job that the higher it goes, the more interesting salaries are guaranteed (like that of the digital brand manager), so it can be a good sector to focus on.
Can the profession of Brand Specialist give a lot of satisfaction?
Yes, but you also have to take a lot of responsibility and be decisive, creative, and transversal.
Whoever does this job never stops working, in the sense that anything can be inspirational: even if you are at the bar with friends, you hear their conversations, an idea can come from there or something can be reconnected from there… so it is a job you have to do out of passion and it never stops.
How can you start a career as a Brand Specialist?
- Definitely inform yourself, always use Google and follow the updates of big and small companies, see what the hottest advertising campaigns of the moment are, their results, and their failures… try to understand it all.
- Always observe everything around you, and get informed about everything, the more eclectic and transversal you are the better in this job, so you have to have knowledge from communication to graphics, from data analysis to SEO positioning; you have to know a bit of everything, even more than the Project Manager who is usually the figure that goes with it.
- Work -at least in the initial phase- a lot on your CV and personal branding. If you can’t sell yourself well, let alone be able to do so with the company product.
One piece of advice I can give to those approaching this job is to shred the European CV and do something more creative, more graphic, and simple, which gives a very strong message to the company, both to tell who you are as a person and to tell what you can do, what you would like to do.
There is no point in starting the CV by telling all the experiences you have had, it is difficult for someone to stand there and read everything. What counts is knowing how to sell yourself, so the advice I give is to do extra work on your CV, because it can really make a difference. I have also tested it on my own skin.
If you liked the article, I recommend that you delve deeper into digital subjects by attending the Digital Marketing Course.
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