Julia Krüger

Graduation
September 2020

Study Course
Brand Management B.A.

Title of Thesis
Verbesserung der Kundenzufriedenheit im stationären Lebensmitteleinzelhandel mit Hilfe mobiler Apps am Beispiel EDEKA: Vorteile für den Handel und die Kunden.

Hi Julia, what have you been doing since graduation?
Hello! I officially started as Jr. Brand Manager at Erasco right on the day after our graduation. Even as I was writing the last lines of my thesis, I knew where I was headed after graduation. This took a lot of pressure off me when writing.

How did you join Erasco?
That’s a funny story. I always say “the job was in my spam folder”. Many students know it, during the exam period you sit at your desk and you think of the least important things you would like to do immediately. So during our last exam period, I sat at my desk at 11pm in the evening and decided to clean up my email inbox and with it my spam folder.
Monotonously, I deleted one email after another and realised just in time that I knew the sender of one email. It was my former contact from the HR department of GB Foods Germany with a very interesting job offer for me. Before I started my studies, I completed an apprenticeship as an industrial management assistant and stayed with the company for a few months as a marketing assistant after my apprenticeship. However, it was clear to me that I would like to go to university and so I left the company after a total of 3 years and threw myself into my time at BU. They got back to me and just before the end of my studies, I had my dream job in my pocket.
Yes, I was really lucky that I was able to build up a small network before my studies and that my current position became available at exactly the right time.

What are your tasks there?
I hardly have a regular day and routine tasks. No day is the same and that’s what makes the job in brand management so attractive from my point of view. You are the central contact person from the first idea to the finished product and you are in touch with almost every department. In brand management, we come up with product ideas and work closely with the research and development department. We maintain and revise the current product portfolio, conduct market research and derive strategies and goals from it. But planning and managing campaigns is also part of my job. For the last few weeks, I’ve been handling an influencer campaign and working on a limited edition. I’m also responsible for tracking our new products, so I’m eagerly awaiting the new sales figures and other KPIs every month. The tasks in brand management are very diverse, interesting and therefore anything but monotonous.

What is the best thing about your job?
The best thing about the job is the variety, of course, but also the feeling of seeing or holding the finished campaign or product in your hands. Sometimes you work for months on a new product or plan a campaign for several weeks, and seeing it finished after all that work motivates me every day.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think back to BU?
The first thing I think of are the friendships I made with my fellow students during my studies.
In addition, I am also in contact with some lecturers and professors, which definitely speaks for the great relationship between students and teachers. I also still really appreciate the fact that everyone at BU is there to give advice, even after graduation!
Besides the valuable contacts, I also associate a lot of work with my studies. To be honest, I put a lot of pressure on myself during my studies. In the end, I am proud and also very happy about my great degree, but I would have liked to enjoy the studies more, it was very exhausting for me in the last few months. Nevertheless, I would choose exactly the same study programme again, because it was just right for me.

Why did you choose BU?
During my training, I was able to observe the brand managers of the Erasco and Heisse Tasse brands and it became clear to me that I would also like to become a brand manager one day!
But a classic business degree was out of the question for me, I already knew too well what I wanted to be when I grew up. So the fact that the Brand Management course exists was a gift for me.

Did you already know what you wanted to become before you started studying? How did BU shape your career aspirations?
Yes, even before I started studying, I knew that I wanted to become a brand manager. The degree programme strengthened this desire and gave me the necessary tools.

What experience has stuck in your memory in particular?
Of course I have special memories of our “extraordinary” graduation ceremony under Corona conditions and I would like to thank the university once again for allowing us to experience the end of our studies together in a small ceremony despite the difficult conditions.

What advice do you have for students to make the leap into a career right after graduation?
Particularly at this time, when it has become much more difficult to find a job, as I perceive that companies are hiring far fewer or more cautiously, contacts are key. During your studies, you make really important contacts through practical projects, internships and student jobs. Maintain and use the network that you build up during your studies.

What are your plans for the future?
Of course, I want to find my way even more into my role as Jr. Brand Manager and gain more experience. In addition, I already noticed during the term papers and also during the thesis that I love writing. One of my lifelong dreams is therefore to write my own book one day.

For me, Hamburg is…
Always the city in which I studied and therefore a beautiful memory. After three years of studying and the many kilometres I travelled on the S-Bahn and was able to see many beautiful corners, Hamburg has really grown on me.

Where do people meet you when you’re not in the office?
I am an absolute “child of the coast”. I love to go for walks with my dog at the Baltic Sea. For me, this is an absolute place to switch off and recharge.