Dive Brief:
- The CPG marketing environment has been anything but stable as major food and beverage companies slim down to cut costs, which often impacts marketing departments. Kraft Heinz is a recent example.
- Many of these CPG marketers who once worked for large manufacturers are finding opportunities at smaller, up-and-coming food and beverage companies. Startups and smaller operations offer marketers a chance to have a more significant, direct impact.
- The CPG industry has long been an incubator for top marketing talent. The major manufacturers have created a less stable environment for marketers, but CPG marketers are finding their talents in-demand by technology companies looking to gain better customer insight.
Dive Insight:
Both new and seasoned marketers face a different reality for their career paths. Major manufacturers are cutting back on marketing staff, and startups face such a challenging and competitive market that they don't last more than a few years. Finding that sweet spot to spend a long-term career isn't impossible, but it's not as realistic.
As a result, the CPG industry may start to look more like a starting point for marketers or a place to gain valuable skills while they can. They might then ship off to other CPG companies or even other industries in need of a CPG marketer's perspective, such as technology (like Amazon) or healthcare.
This could be to find a more stable job, or it could reflect another new norm since millennials have flooded the job market — job hopping. Just over nine in 10 millennials don't expect to stay at the same job for more than three years, according to a 2012 Future Workplace survey. The average worker stays at the same job for about 4.4 years, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics.