Mark Nicholson – Trade marketing manager, Digital UK
Q&A:
Describe yourself in three words.
Friendly, honest, fair.
How would you define marketing?
Giving people the chance to benefit from your product.
What would you be if you weren’t a brand manager?
Unemployed.
What advice would you give someone starting their marketing career today?
Take your chances.
What attracted you to your current job?
Working on a campaign that would affect every person in the UK.
When was your finest hour?
Successfully delivering training for the digital switchover to every TV retailer in the UK (although this took longer than an hour, and I needed my friends at Gekko to do so).
What’s your greatest ambition?
To keep smiling.
If you were a brand, what would you be and why?
Post-it Notes. Clever, practical and you can stick me almost anywhere – I’ll do a good job.
What is your all-time favourite slogan?
‘Beanz meanz Heinz.’
What marketing trend is dominating your job at the moment?
Retail headcount reductions leading to time-pressure in store.
What are your hobbies?
Hockey, tennis and amateur dramatics.
If you weren’t you, who would you be?
Clive Anderson.
What makes you angry?
Email conversations instead of proper ones.
What is your favourite pub?
My house; the company’s good and the refreshments are always to my taste.
If you had three wishes, what would they be?
Liverpool beating Manchester United to win the Premier League (with me at the match); safe and secure future for my family; and more wishes.
What have been your best and worst freebies?
The best was when we flew customers to Euro 2004. The worst? An unsolicited, branded mouse mat.
What headline would you most like to read in Marketing?
‘Jargon banned from marketing meetings’.
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