Campus Brand Manager Review

I enjoyed the insight a lot. Danone is a very welcoming, friendly company that emphasized its youthful and creative culture on numerous occasions during the insights event. It was extremely cool to work in such a laidback environment, although it was clear that all the employees there worked extremely hard.

I felt very valued during our time at the firm. Many campus brand manager schemes provide little- no exciting events for their managers, but we were made to feel very important and crucial to the effectiveness of recruitment. We also were well fed and well looked after, stayed at a wonderful hotel and sampled the best food near the Danone HQ.

We received a lot of support during our insight. Throughout each activity, we were instructed carefully on what was expected of us, and the standard that the work produced should reach. The guidance was actually what made it easiest to develop a bond with my fellow campus brand manager, and we quickly gelled to create constructive business plans for the year to come.

I think the information we received will be highly beneficial when we work towards employability. I know have a heightened knowledge of commercial awareness, as well as knowledge of the employment process in large companies such as Danone. I think I have learned some valuable transferable skills. We also did a discovery insights profile, which i think will be extremely useful in developing my work skills and ethic.

The insight was pretty well structured. There were some times where the content of presentations overlapped and we were told the same things a few times but in general, there was a variety of material covered and we were kept well informed and interested for the whole week. The best part was all the different talks from different areas of the businesses as they were unit specific and well thought out.

The atmosphere was really good during the insight. There was almost always a relaxed atmosphere with no real panic about anything. The most stressful part was the planning and presentation we had to give, although we received ample feedback and were guided carefully throughout the week on what we were supposed to present.

We learnt much about the company culture, especially about some of its lesser known brands, such as fortisip and actimel. In fact, there was a large emphasis on Danone as a global health conscious care brand rather than a big corporation, which I believe is a large selling point for their graduate scheme.

I was paid 100 pounds in incentive vouchers, which are a really great scheme and are highly flexible. We were reimbursed for travel and food expenses whilst we were there on all three days (even on the day we travelled away!!) Reimbursement took a very long time, but we were prewarned about this.

There weren't many opportunities to meet many other graduates other than talent management and some recruiters. We were given talks by various members of staff, but some of them were placement students and graduates, and thus didn't give us a great opportunity to network. It was good spending time with the talent management team, but would be better if we had met some of the management team perhaps.

I would definitely recommend this insight to a friend. It was a great experience working at Danone, and my first experience working in a large FMCG company. It's also a good way to get a feel for the kind of employment that you are looking for post graduation, and whether FMCG, or large businesses are for you.