Typical Day
Stella Sella wakes up to cloudy skies: Looks like it's going to be another beautiful day in north Texas. It isn't raining yet, though, so she dresses quickly, leaps into her car, and makes the ten-minute commute to work.
Stella is a marketing manager at Crayon Cosmetics International, a company that signs on consultants to directly sell nearly 200 cosmetic products to women in thirty countries.
She's is responsible for the Crayon product line, which means that she works with product development to come up with new cosmetics to sell on a quarterly basis that are in line with the Crayon corporate vision and revenue goals. She then manages the marketing efforts around these new cosmetics, as well as the products that are the old warhorses of the Crayon line.
Stella is something of a legend at Crayon: She came up with the idea for the Springtime Series, an artsy little compact that she and her team then built an amazing marketing campaign around. The Springtime Series boosted Crayon's profits by millions of dollars two years ago, when the product was launched, and the compact continues to perform well in all markets.
At 8:00AM, Stella is in her office at Crayon headquarters, reading email and listening to voicemail. She likes to plow through communications first thing in the morning. Then, at 9:00AM, she steps into a large conference room with the Crayon Marketing Director, Adva Tising, and the three members of Stella's product marketing team.
While Adva listens, Stella goes around the room, getting updates on the day's deliverables, deadlines, project statuses, and meeting schedules from her team members. Adva tells the team she's been really pleased with their performance this quarter, then she's off to another meeting with a smile and a wave.
Stella is determined to have Adva's job by the end of the year.
By 9:20AM, Stella's team is hard at work, and Stella herself is immersed in Google Analytics. She uses this software frequently to see what products Crayon customers and potential customers are viewing online, and how often these views turn into online sales. This data, in turn, helps Stella figure out which products are successes and which ones are failures, which marketing tactics are working and which aren't, and which new products Crayon's research and development group should work on in the future.
Ten in the morning is sign-off time for Stella. This morning, her copywriter has several draft items for the fall quarter product line for Stella to look over. She's very pleased with Penn Scribble's work, and signs off on the copy.
At 10:30AM, Stella and a number of other people from upper management and the executive team meet with the public relations agency Crayon has just hired to represent and advise the company. This agency is still learning about the products the cosmetics company offers, as well as its vision, mission, and objectives.
During the meeting, which lasts until noon, Stella gets ten minutes to go over why the Crayon product line is so amazing, and then spends five minutes answering questions from the PR agency's representatives.
After the meeting, Stella takes a forty-five-minute lunch break in the company cafeteria. She sits with Penn and a couple of guys from R&D. Just as Stella is finishing up her sandwich, the rain she's been anticipating all day hits. She usually takes a quick walk outside after she eats, to clear her head and relax, but it looks like that won't be happening this afternoon.
By 1:00PM, Stella is back at work. This time, she's in a meeting with Crayon's new Digital Media Director. For the last fifty years, as long as Crayon has been in existence, the company has relied on its millions of consultants to sell product. People do so much online nowadays, however, that even the old fogies who lead Crayon think it's time to go digital.
Enter Compu Screen, whose job it is to build up Crayon’s online presence over the next six months. Stella spends an hour-and-a-half with Compu and several other people from the marketing and engineering departments, spitballing ideas. Stella pushes very hard for a virtual makeover app, where Crayon customers and potential customers can upload photos of themselves and then test how various products might look. Stella is so excited that her company is finally entering the twenty-first century.
At 2:30PM, Stella stops back at her desk to quickly check her e-mail and voice messages. There's nothing too urgent, so she runs downstairs to a consultant leadership meeting. She spends thirty minutes meeting with the most successful consultants in the state, asking for their feedback on her marketing materials and efforts.
At 3:00PM, Stella goes into a meeting with the Crayon corporate event coordinator. The annual consultant conference, which usually has tens of thousands of attendees, is scheduled to meet in Atlanta in six months. Stella and the event coordinator go over how they want to include product marketing in the event.
Do they want to do giveaways? Do they want to have the consultants use the new digital tools Compu is overseeing in order to access exclusive prizes? How many booths do they need to show off product? What are the limitations of the event space on how Stella wants to market at the conference?
At 5:00PM, Stella is back at her desk. She has a quick meeting with her graphic designer, who has a list of updates to make to the product portions of the Crayon website. Stella okays all the updates, and then goes in search of a cookie and a cup of tea. It's pouring rain outside; the Dallas traffic looks awful. So, she sits down to do some innovating.
Stella spends the next two hours reading over marketing and cosmetics industry articles that she's been collecting all week. As Crayon headquarters empties out, she asks herself questions and comes up with ideas, particularly about social media and the upcoming push to digital.
Many of the younger consultants have no issue with doing everything online, but what about those consultants who've been in the business for thirty years and are used to doing everything face-to-face? How will going digital affect their ability to sell product?
At 7:00PM, Stella gives up the ghost and goes home. Most of the traffic has cleared, so she gets to her apartment quickly, makes dinner, and then settles down to watch some Mad Men.
Stella's mother and grandmother are Crayon consultants, so Stella's been using Crayon products since she was a teenager, and she's always had ideas about how to get people to buy cosmetics. After earning her bachelor's degree in marketing, Stella spent ten years working in various marketing positions at two of the biggest cosmetics companies in the world. One day, while on the Crayon website, she saw that a product marketing manager position was open. Stella applied and landed the job within a couple of weeks.
There are a lot of restrictions to working for Crayon that make Stella's job challenging. It's a traditional company that focuses on selling product as a way to empower women to be businesspeople. The usual marketing tricks that Stella might use to sell cosmetics—television and magazine ads, for example—aren't used by Crayon; it's been a word-of-mouth kind of company for decades. But the limitations on what she's allowed to do just make Stella more creative in her marketing efforts.