Isabella Palacios (USC Marshall, ‘21) spent her summer as a Marketing Summer Associate at Nestlé. In this role, she immersed herself in the life of a Brand Manager, using her data, storytelling, and cross functional skills to execute her projects. During this interview, Isabella spoke about her internship experience, and what she learned from the experience.
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship, and what projects did you work on?
Over the summer, I worked as a Marketing Summer Associate in the Global Brands Division at Nestlé. During my [virtual] 10 weeks at Nestlé, I was tasked with two projects, an executional one and a strategic one. The strategic project is the bulk of your internship and it allows you to bring your unique perspective to burning questions the business has while the executional one allows you to recommend an improvement on something the business is already doing.
For my strategic project, I was focused on rethinking how we deliver value to our consumers in order to build a strategic roadmap for increasing market share in value-oriented channels. On the other hand, for my executional project, I focused on providing recommendations for the digital strategy of a new brand.
I consider brand managers (i.e. marketing associates) as mini CEOs of a brand, meaning collaboration and curiosity are paramount for success. And this was indeed the case during my summer. Without collaborating with over 25 people across different departments to truly understand the landscape and constantly asking why in order to uncover opportunities, I would have not been able to land on my final recommendations.
At the same time, you have to be data-driven because as a marketer you will be swimming in data and you need to discern what is useful from what’s not. In my case, I was using about 8 different data sources to guide my decision-making process and tell a story that made sense (fun fact: according to Salesforce, the median number of data sources used by marketers in 2019 is 15). Lastly, you need to be consumer obsessed. Everything you do needs to be consumer centric.
MBASchooled: What initially attracted you to an internship in Brand Management, and how did that play out of the summer?
I majored in marketing so I fell in love with the discipline a long time ago. However, it wasn’t until my time at Mintel -where I helped marketing teams at several CPG food companies in Latin America identify and evaluate markets and trends to find innovation opportunities to drive product development processes more strategically- that I became fascinated by how marketers can create and nurture sustainable growth. At the same time, I have always considered myself a foodie and I have always admired the power of food to connect people. I wanted to leverage my passion for the food industry on a professional level to continue to transform the way we nourish ourselves. These motivated me to pursue an MBA and consequently an internship in brand management.
Being able to intern at Nestle, the biggest food company in the world, alongside the brands I grew up with, was a dream come true. It was a challenging experience that stretched me and pushed me to get outside of my comfort zone – and I could not be more grateful for that. I’m excited to come back next year as a full-time associate and keep developing my career.
MBASchooled: What was an important lesson that you learned from your summer internship?
I learned so many valuable things during my internship that it is hard to boil it down to just one. But if I had to go with one, it would be to have a growth mindset: listen, learn, ask questions, work hard, be grateful for feedback, accept your failures, and strive for growth.
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually? What helped?
Building relationships virtually is not as seamless or as natural, but it is certainly not impossible. I say that is all about having a positive attitude and putting in the extra effort (e.g. preparing thoughtful questions and having your camera on).
I say that it is also important to remember that we are living in challenging times and people are anxious, angry, optimistic, and happy all at the same time. You have to be considerate and thoughtful and approach relationship building with empathy, compassion, and gratitude.
MBASchooled: What was a challenge that you had to overcome or work through?
Midpoint through my internship, I started suffering from “analysis paralysis” (and I think it was starting to show). With so much data to navigate through, I felt like I was in a never-ending hamster wheel. My curiosity did not help me either as I wanted to dig in deeper with each new piece of insight I uncovered doing my research.
I realized I was falling behind and if I continued this way, I would not be able to finish my strategic project on time. I thus took the decision to stop gathering data and rather put into work all the data I already had. I created personal deadlines and curbed my curiosity. These allowed me to move forward more efficiently.
MBASchooled: Knowing what you know now, what would you do to prepare in order to be even more successful in your internship?
One word: storytelling. It took me such a long time to translate my data into insights and piece my story together. I have found this a very hard skill to get better at as it is constantly evolving. In order to get better at it, I have ramped up reading scholarly literature in order to find patterns among different data sources while at the same time always asking “so what?”
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for students who are considering a career in Brand Management?
Brand management is about creating value for both your consumers and your business. And it can be hard to create value if, one, you don’t believe in your products and, two, you don’t have an in-depth understanding of the landscape where your products compete. This means that consuming content about a specific topic will be a daily part of your job and if you find a topic that you don’t enjoy reading and learning about, maybe you should rethink if you want to pursue a career in that industry. Overall, my advice would be to seek a career in an industry you are passionate about and in a company you trust and believe in.
More from USC Marshall Students