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Inspiring future business leaders
For the past two months, AG Barr’s Jonathan Kemp has dedicated every Friday afternoon to teaching business students about working in FMCG.
Final-year undergraduates at the University of Strathclyde have been given valuable insight into the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry in a new course designed and led by AG Barr’s commercial director Jonathan Kemp.
‘Brand Building in an FMCG Environment’ comprised weekly twohour lectures over a semester. These covered all aspects of FMCG, from purchasing to production, financial to logistics, sales to marketing, and of course customer to consumer.
“The course draws heavily on realworld experiences,” Kemp explains. “I am not an academic and I don’t necessarily understand some of the business theories, but I’ve got 30 years of experience. There are lots of ways I have been able to illustrate key points, particularly as I have shared the good, the bad and the ugly to show that we can learn from mistakes as well as successes.”
The students –who are all in the university’s business school – also heard from other industry experts about their roles and career paths. These guest speakers included AG Barr’s supply chain director Karl Donnan and business unit director Ian Johnstone; Ed Brooke, head of The Leith Agency (which creates the advertising for IrnBru); and the IGD’s CEO Susan Barrett.
To reinforce their learning, the students were invited to take the IGD’s Fast Track New Starter course –something that is usually available only to people starting out in an FMCG role.
The final element of the course was an assignment to create and launch a new soft drink. “I was trying to emphasise to the students the importance of being consumer and customer centric in their thinking, and justifying the choices they are making,” says Kemp.
Explaining his idea to devise the course with the support of teaching fellow Thomas McAlinden, Kemp adds: “The University of Strathclyde’s strapline is ‘The Place of Useful Learning’ and I thought there was probably more that could be done to bring the outside world into the university.
“The academic and business worlds are very different, so I think it is good to prepare students for what it is going to be like working in a business. Students tend to think about their particular discipline – ‘I’m an economist’ or ‘I’m a marketer’ – but when you work in FMCG you are much more of an all-rounder: you need to havean appreciation of areas other than your own specialism.”
Although Kemp had not previously done any formal teaching, training and development have been a key part of his working life since he first entered the FMCG industry as an account executive at Procter & Gamble in 1992. “I joined the business and a year later I was helping to develop and train the people who joined a year after me,” he recalls.
“I approached teaching at the University of Strathclyde in a similar way – treating the students a bit less like students and a bit more like people who had just started out in business.”
Kemp hopes that the course will have given them a fast start if they choose to work in FMCG. “They are being exposed to knowledge they typically wouldn’t get until they have actually started work –for example, talking about the wholesale industry and the way it is the route to market for 35,000 symbols and independent shops in the UK was an eye-opener for many of the students.”
He adds: “With this course, there is also an element of encouraging top talent into FMCG. If any of the students were inspired to go into the industry and then went on to have a fantastic career, that would be the outcome I would be most proud of.”
Despite getting up at 5.30am on the days he teaches so that he can attend to his AG Barr duties, Kemp would be pleased to continue his voluntary teaching role if the university decides to repeat the course. “I enjoy training and developing people – I always have,” he says. “Perhaps in another life I would have been a teacher.” CCM
Student viewpoint
“I really enjoyed the course because it was about the practical application of everything I’ve been learning over the years.
“It was challenging but gave me a better insight into marketing in the real world.
“It also helped demonstrate the dynamic nature of the FMCG industry and has further driven me to pursue a career in marketing in this area.”
