Month 6: Product & Artist Management

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Product & Artist Management course:



For my Leadership Portfolio I decided to interview Product Manager, Ineabelle Soto. She has been the Product Manager for Dell in Latin America & the Caribbean for the past three and a half years. Mrs. Soto has a Bachelor in Advertising with a minor in Marketing from the University of Puerto Rico. Once she graduated she started applying for different position outside the Island and was fortunate enough to get this opportunity given the past experience in marketing and advertising she acquired while going to school.

What her job entails is basically to manage the brand (Dell) all over the Latin America and the Caribbean markets. Some of the countries her product currently has presence are: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia among others. Also her job can be divided with the fact that her product is not only one. They divide the product in two segments. First the have the ones that are targeted to a normal, every day consumer audience and second they have the ones that are targeted to a more business-oriented consumer. According to Mrs. Soto this is done because even when both are under the same name (Dell) and are the same product (computers) they are targeted to very different audiences so the way to reach them and make an impact so they will buy the product is very different.

A week in the office for Mrs. Soto starts with a conference call with both the Media and the Advertising Agency to plan where and when are they going to be promoting the latest product in all of those countries. She has a weekly budget to which she has to make sure both the Advertising and the Media agency adhere to. Coordinating with both they decide the type of advertising campaign that they will use for both target market in the different countries. Some may only use print media (which is generally where they promote the product in the Latin American countries), some will be supported by either radio ads or online advertising or both. For example in Puerto Rico, since it’s a market that is what they call very “Americanized” they use a lot of online marketing but for countries like Mexico, Venezuela or Colombia they prefer to use only print ads in both newspapers and specialized magazines.

All of this strategic planning is also highly influenced by what time of year is and the different holidays or special dates that that country might be celebrating at the moment. For example, we might think the famous “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving Day is an event only happening in the United States but in Latin America and the Caribbean they also have it or at least a version of it. This is one of the most important days in the year for a product like Dell Computers. The weeks before this event, and more important the days before, the advertising has to be very strong and strategically placed so they can make the most of this day where one of the most purchased items are electronics.

After all this meetings she receives the clippings and copies of the different ads in the different countries so she can have a record of what was advertised and where. In this ads there is a phone number that people need to call to buy the computer. Each ad has a unique phone number each week.
They do this to measure how effective is the ad and where they advertised it by how many people responded to it. This is a data that she has to study each week so she can plan what is going to be advertised and where so each the goals she has for the brand are accomplished and to make the most of her budget at the same time.

Besides all of this, she coordinates her appearance at all of the different conventions that she as the product manager would have attend to represent the brand. Also they have a yearly event where the showcase to different vendors their new products.

At the end of the interview I asked her what would be the three most important characteristics that she thought a good Product Manager should have. According to her they should be organized, strategic thinkers, and multi-taskers. They need to be strategic in the decisions they make, and organized and multi-taskers because they have different things going on at once for their product and they can’t afford to drop the ball on any of them because that could affect the brand.


References:

Interview with Dell Product Manager – Latin America and Caribbean Market, Ineabelle Soto on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010.