What are the “hidden” corporate jobs you never hear about?

What are the “hidden” corporate jobs you never hear about?

Hi, I’m Janet Granger, answering the question: “What are the hidden corporate jobs that people don’t usually hear about, or know about?”

This is a great question and definitely one worth answering. There are mid-size and larger organizations, and what are called CPG companies (Consumer Packaged Goods). For example, there’s Colgate, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson – there are a lot of others – and a lot of these consumer companies – a lot of what they do – is marketing. 

I’m going to just give you an example: I want you to think about toothpaste. Toothpaste – that  everybody uses every day. A lot of science goes into creating toothpaste, making sure it’s got fluoride and it stops cavities and it makes your teeth whiter and it freshens your breath, etc. etc.

But a lot of what goes into toothpaste now is marketing. Things like: 

• how much space they take up on the shelf 
• the different boxes 
• the different designs 
• the different colors 
• the way the tube is shaped 
• the sizes

Realize that every single one of those decisions is marketing. Based on this, here are some of the hidden positions that you may not know about. 

The first one is the product marketer, or the brand manager, who works in marketing. They’re in charge of the brand. At a place like Colgate, when we’re talking about Colgate toothpaste, they do everything from: 

• making sure it gets manufactured
• and put in the boxes 
• figuring out the packaging
• how it gets shipped to stores
• the different store deals

If you’re in digital marketing, you may not be thinking about stores; everyone focuses on e-commerce (and e-commerce is huge). But people still go to stores to buy things, and it’s important how product gets to stores, gets put on shelves, etc. 

A product marketer cares not only about what the product looks like, but also how much shelf space you get, and is the shelf space at eye level (or is it way way down below or high above). These are all things that brand managers think about, because it makes a big difference in terms of how much of your product will actually sell. 

There’s something called in-store display, where the product is on the shelf or on the ends of the aisles, or even freestanding displays that show a product, to really make it stand out (because it’s blocking your way and you can see it right there). That’s a marketing merchandisers job. 

There are people who help get the product in the store; they decide what products come into a store and they’re called buyers.  Buyers at big retail stores – a Target or Macy’s – they’re the people who decide what kind of products are going to be carried, based on the goal of the organization. They may have product licenses they’re dealing with. Think about the typical customer at Target, for example: what do they need? What are they thinking? What do they expect in a store? What would make their buying experience complete, when it comes to having certain product lines available?

There are also media buyers and it’s exactly what it sounds like. They buy the media – there is a lot of media being bought, such as television ads, and radio. There are people in charge of making sure that that media is bought very efficiently and that it serves the customer well. 

There’s market research – people who do everything from polls (you’ve probably heard of Gallup polls, for example) and they’ll use polling information, as well as other tools, to understand customer behavior: how customers think about a product, use a product, like a product. It can be vital to understanding how people think about the product. 

I’ll give you an example:think about banking – your bank. A bank may want to know if customers trust them, if they like them, if they’ve lost their trust, if they’d like additional products. How many products should a consumer have with a bank before it makes the relationship “sticky” and it’s hard for them to leave? Banks are thinking about things like this. And it’s really important – market research can tell them you know exactly how entangled Janet has to be with a bank before it makes it hard for her to leave. 

Which brings me to the next one, which is marketing data and data analytics. You’ve probably heard of Google Analytics online. But there are lots of different analytics available in terms of how people buy, the way people buy. There’s a thing called shopping baskets – if you buy this product, you’re more likely to buy that product – or people tend to have bought them together.  

There’s a very famous (old) business case about the fact that, at night, the sales of baby diapers were very closely correlated to the sales of beer. Because what happened, a couple decades ago, was mothers who had young babies might run low on disposable diapers. They would ask their husbands/partners to go out to buy more baby diapers – in the middle of the night. It turns out that their behavior (or thought process was): I’m buying the diapers for the baby, I’ll get some beer for me. This pattern was so widespread in the U.S. that grocery store owners started putting them right next to each other in the store: here are the diapers, here’s the beer. 

So understanding the data analytics of how things are being bought can help you understand how to market the beer, to go along with the diapers.

There’s also something called public relations. There’s a publicist, or a business representative who writes press releases. They get the press excited and involved when it comes to everything from new products to new events that are happening in the market, either for the general public or for the industry to know about.

Finally, there’s something called internal communications. If your company has thousands of people in it, they need to know what’s going on – in other areas of the company – or they may be global, so what’s going on in each different country. They may be in one product category, so it’s  what’s going on in other product categories. There are lots of times when people internally are not necessarily hearing or knowing what’s going on in different parts of the company – and it’s important for internal communications to make sure that people within the company understand what’s important for them to know. 

So, as you can see, there’s a wide range of jobs available in larger organizations – the hidden corporate job market – and these are just a few of them. 

I’m Janet Granger, answering the question: “What are the hidden corporate jobs that people don’t typically know about?”