Rachel Siu

6.20 AM

Whether it’s a weekday or the weekend, I always like to start my morning with an F45 class. Beyond helping me with my fitness, exercising helps me to clear my head and be fully alert so I can start my day on the right foot.

8.30 AM

Once home, I eat breakfast and start replying to any emails I received overnight – working with global teams located around the world means keeping on top of emails so we minimise the delay across time zones. Then I make my to-do list for the day, split it out into what needs to be done by EOD and EOW to help me with prioritisation.

9.30 AM

My first meeting for the day is a team catch up, where we talk priorities for the week, share any updates and talk about everyone’s weekend plans. Today, I share some exciting results from my Streets 1L PR and Media campaign - in our first week of sales, Bubble O’Bill and Paddle Pop are the #1 and #2 1L ice cream tubs in New Zealand on the weekly sales ranking report! I also show my team the digital and Out Of Home creative I developed for the campaign, which went live in NZ last week.

10.00 AM

Now it’s time to take my manager through my 3-year strategy for the Streets 1L range, and the 2022 and 2023 portfolios. This plan has been in the works for the past few months and involved many segments: deep dives into our current consumer groups to understand their current pain points, brainstorms on how we turn these insights into action plans to increase penetration, market-wide competitor analysis, flavour mapping to see what is currently available in the market and what flavours represent white spaces or opportunities, ideation sessions with the R&D and factory team to determine what flavours and concepts are feasible, and finally concept testing with consumers. Long term planning is an iterative process, starting with learning from consumers and ensuring we can feasibly build plans which tackle their needs for the coming year. With some final tweaks, my 2022 portfolio is ready to present to the business at the annual Go To Market day in August!

11.00 AM

Once a fortnight, we have a company-wide townhall, where we hear how the business is tracking, get the first look at new product launches and campaigns from different business units, and hear from guest speakers. My team is encouraged to take walking meetings when we can to increase our movement for the day, so I grab my headphones and walk to Coogee beach and back while listening to the meeting.

12.00 PM

It’s lunch time! I head to the kitchen to see if I can scavenge any leftovers from last night’s dinner. While eating, I scroll through Instagram and tiktok. I follow a bunch of global snacking accounts to see what other brands are doing around the world. Today I’ve found some interesting new product launches and collabs from the UK, which I send to my team on WhatsApp to discuss.

12.30 PM

Now that I work from home 4 out of 5 days of the working week, I really value virtual coffee catch ups with my friends. Today I’ve got my fortnightly catch up with the grads in my cohort, where the hot topic is how we’re going to top the first year grads who organised for us to plant trees for World Environment Day.

1.00 PM

I have blocked out a few hours in the afternoon to smash out some ‘deep work time’. The first item on my to-do list is approving the pack artwork for a new Calippo product in BLUE, an artwork approval system. Since we designed the visual elements months ago, we’re now onto the final checks on packaging text. Marketing is responsible for checking that all the marketing copy, logos, Unilever carelines and addresses is correct. I take my time on this task as this is the last check before the artwork goes to print - there will be no spelling mistakes on my watch! My next item on my to-do list is prepping for a market share meeting later this week, where each brand lead goes through the previous months market share and penetration results for their brands. I am responsible for Paddle Pop, Streets 1L tubs, Calippo and Cyclone. I spend the afternoon conducting a deep dive into last month’s data and hypothesizing what drove those results and what actions need to be taken for next month.  

4.15 PM

One of my favourite parts of the marketing role is tasting all our new products! Since my team is working from home, we have gotten the ice cream samples couriered to our homes and will conduct an online taste testing with the R&D team. It can be tricky balancing how marketing envisions the product to taste and look with the realities of factory capabilities and cost of raw materials, so it’s important that I continually conduct cost reviews with each new formulation. This is the 3rd formulation we have tasted for this ice cream; my team is determined to nail this formulation!  

4.30 PM

It’s the tail end of the day and I’m heading into my last few meetings. I’m catching up with the Coles and Woolworths customer managers to review how my products are performing and to give them an update on my marketing plans for my brands. To make a campaign as big as possible, it’s important that the marketing and customer team work together to amplify any Above The Line plans with in store activity, so we also spend this time seeing what instore or online opportunities we can go after.

5.00 PM

I finish a little later than usual today as I have a meeting with the Global Kids team who are based in Europe. I take them through my 2022 and 2023 Kids portfolio (this encompasses Paddle Pop and Calippo products) to keep them updated on ANZ plans and how we are going to deliver growth and hit the global targets together. They also share with me updates on global projects and how they’re tracking in case we want to replicate anything in ANZ.

6.00 PM

It’s time to log off now! I quickly make a note of any work or emails I didn’t get to, then catch the bus into the city for dinner and drinks with my friends. Once I get home from dinner, I spend (too many) hours scrolling tiktok before I call it a night. 

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