Name: Maresa Ronan
Age: 25
Job title: Assistant brand manager
Company & location: Blanco Niño, London
Education: Business and Economics at Trinity College Dublin and MA Global Business Practice at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, Dublin
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Growing up on a farm in Ireland and having competing horses at a top level for Ireland, animals, especially horses, were a central part of my childhood. From a young age this sparked my interest in veterinary medicine as I wanted to work around animals.
“Take the time to really build relationships with people you meet along the way”
Why did you decide to go for a career in food & drink? Towards the end of my degree at Trinity College Dublin, I wasn’t really sure what path I wanted to take, whether to do a master’s or go straight into work.
I applied for Bord Bia’s Graduate Programme as it offered a mixture of both: a full-time role in an international office and also a master’s degree. I was successful in the application stages and landed a space in this programme based in the London office for two years covering the alcohol, dairy, seafood and meat categories (and the rest is history!).
Explain your job to us in a sentence (or two): I help bring the Blanco Niño brand to life by developing marketing strategies, co-ordinating campaigns, and ensuring our products reach the right audience.
What does a typical day look like for you? No two days are the same, which is what I love most about my role. As the marketing department is quite small it means I get exposure to almost every area of the business.
Typically I start the day by reviewing emails and then our social media channels to reply to any messages or comments received on our social accounts. Then it is usually on to briefing creatives for upcoming campaigns and general planning for activations we have coming up.
We try to create cohesive campaign moments with the activations we do, so I look at ways we can create these moments and tie them in with what is going on in the business at a particular time.
Tell us how you went about applying for your job: My application process consisted of four stages (two in-person interviews, one virtual interview and a written stage). The first stage was an initial coffee catch-up with the head of marketing and sales director. Following this, I had a virtual catch-up with our company founder, Phil Martin, before the final-round interview with Phil, our head of sales and head of marketing.
For the final interview, I prepared a presentation outlining my ideas for potential marketing strategies that could be implemented in the coming months. The last stage was a written exercise, where I hand-wrote a letter to our founder explaining why I wanted to work with the brand and the impact I felt I could make.
What’s the best part about working for a food & drink company? I love how fast-paced the fmcg world is and how things can change so quickly. This means you have to be really agile in how you approach projects and have a real problem solving approach to things.
I also love the creative side of my role, and how there is so much white-space to go after with regards to NPD and opportunities with retailers.
And what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in food & drink? I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that working in food and drink is just about tasting or enjoying the products all day. In reality, it’s a lot of hard work, creativity, and attention to detail, from sourcing the right ingredients to perfecting recipes and making sure every product consistently delivers on quality. But that’s also what makes it so rewarding!
What advice would you give to other young people looking to get into the food & drink industry? As an industry, human connections are so important. The relationships you build along the way can open so many doors so I would recommend taking the time to really build relationships with people you meet along the way.
What’s your ultimate career dream? This is hard to answer as I am still starting out my career and learning what areas of the business I like best.
I ultimately want to be head of marketing or chief marketing officer for an fmcg brand that I really believe in and be instrumental to the growth of that organisation. I also definitely have an itch to start my own food/drink business one day, but I still have lots to learn before that.
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