Henkel Co.

Sales Strategy Intern

Henkel operates worldwide with leading innovations, brands & technologies in three business areas: Adhesive Technologies, Beauty Care and Laundry & Home Care. I worked within the Beauty Care segment of the company where I was able to gain valuable experience within the Consumer Package Goods Industry.

Experience

Developing a relaunch plan for one of our hair styling products starting at stage one of product development
Conducting extensive research on current and anticipated market trends and previous SKU performance to accurately forecast unit sales for the product relaunch in 2020
Analyzing competitor marketing tactics, product lines, newly launched items and other differentiating factors each brand uses within the market to drive a new focus for the specific hair styling brand
Working closely with sales, category management, marketing and supply chain colleagues to find effective ways to build partnerships with Henkel's customer base

new Product Launch

Preliminary research for a new product launch is necessary. Some of the research I completed included:

Current hair styling trends in the market place and where trends will lead in 2020
Features of products that are becoming important to consumers
Poplar products on the market today
The effects of evolving technology and how competitors are using technology to better their products
Where we think the 2020 hair styling trends are moving to

Promotional Analysis

Promotional efforts are extremely important within the CPG industry. I was tasked with evaluating our promotional performance for the past year. This included classifying promotions that were run, pulling sales reports from our data bases, creating detailed bump charts to show our performance year to date compared to year prior, calculating our baseline average and lastly finding our percent lift for each type of promotion in each specific retailer.

This analysis was completed for all brands across our Beauty department including:

Got2B and all other competitors in Hair Styling
Keratin Color, Color Ultime and all other competitors in Hair Color
Gliss and all other competitors in Hair Care
Right Guard and all competitors in APDO
Dial and all other competitors in Liquid Hand Soap
Dial and all other competitors in Bar Soap
Dial and all other competitors in Body Wash

After completing our internal brand category, I analyzed the top three competitors for each beauty category.

The findings from this project were used to determine which promo's were worth our budget allocation, which promo's we should discontinue and how our promotional calendars and results compare to our competitors.

Examples of both the Hair Styling and Bar Soap category for one indivudal retailer below:

Competitor Analysis

Taking a closer look at our competitors, I researched the following:

Individual product comparisons to our specific SKU's
Social media and website design
Differentiated marketing techniques to allow us to find a niche position in the market place for our new products
Package designs