During the summer between my first and second year at Booth, I was a marketing intern for the Tropicana team at PepsiCo’s Chicago offices. For my intern project, I was tasked with evaluating the brand’s opportunity within the multicultural consumer segments and developing and recommending a go-to-market strategy. Many of the marketing principles and fundamentals that I had learned throughout my first year of classes applied directly to my project and played a big role in how I approached the work.
Consumer Research and Needs Identification
One aspect of marketing that I relied on for my work was consumer research and needs identification. By studying this group of potential new consumers, I developed an understanding of who they were, what was important to them, and what their needs were in relation to our product offerings. To gather this information, I partnered with the Consumer Insights team and used syndicated reports from marketing research firms among other resources. Through various analyses, I was able to identify several segments that over-indexed for our category and discovered nuanced purchase behavior and consumption habits of these consumers. This research helped shape the rest of my project.
Market Assessment and Competitive Analysis
Performing a market assessment and competitive analysis allowed me to gain crucial information that would lay the foundations for my final recommendation. The market assessment provided me insights into the current landscape of brands and products in our category. Using panel and scanner datasets, I was able to identify and size the opportunity within the intended consumer segments and determined that moving forward with targeted marketing efforts would be advantageous for the brand.
The competitive analysis revealed which other brands within the category had previously implemented multicultural initiatives, how those efforts tied into that brand’s overarching strategy, and whether they were effective in activating these segments. Working with a few marketing agencies, I evaluated past and present marketing activities that targeted multicultural consumers in order to determine the impact these actions had on a competitor’s performance. These analyses provided me with a better sense of how to approach this opportunity.
Reaching Multicultural Consumers
Finally, applying what I had learned about the strengths of different marketing tactics, I built a comprehensive go-to-market strategy to reach the multicultural consumer segments. I reviewed our brand’s past marketing campaigns to understand what tactics had performed well for us in the past. Also, I used findings from my consumer research to determine the types of messaging and activation efforts that multicultural consumers would be most receptive to. Combining this new information with what I had previously uncovered, I designed an activation roadmap that helped the brand connect and interact with the targeted consumer segments while remaining cohesive with the brand’s overall message and strategy.
Marketing played an integral role in my summer internship at PepsiCo. The principles I learned in my first year at Booth were invaluable in helping me work through the problem I was presented. Now in my full-time role as Associate Brand Manager at Beam Suntory, the world’s third largest premium spirits company, I know I will continue to refer back to my Booth marketing classes and how they taught me to use frameworks to discover the best solutions in the beverage industry and beyond.
For more information on pursuing marketing at Booth, visit the Kilts Center for Marketing website and check out these blogs: From Intern to Full-Time Product Manager at TripAdvisor and 3 Ways Marketing at Booth Led to Summer Internship Success.
