Week 3: More things to do in Cadbury

This was the week I was required to send the gift basket to Dato’ Siti Nurhaliza. After coming up with several ideas, I was struck by the obstacle of not having enough time to requisite the samples from the warehouse and was only given RM100 as a total cost for each gift basket. I had to plan and survey prices for the products and packaging in One Utama. At the end of the discussion with Mei Ying, we went on with the simplest version of gift basket proposed to be safe. I had to use my own money to purchase products and pay for packaging before I received any reimbursement from Mei Ying. Furthermore, I was also tasked with contacting the PR company executive, Amri, to arrange for the gift basket to be collected from the office. While carrying out this task, I learned that it is important to ensure the visibility of the brand and how it should be well represented through simple aspects such as packaging, colors and content of products.

On top of the tasks that I had to handle, I was also asked to organize a lunch for the newly formed chocolate team as part of the recent restructuring of the company into clusters. It was supposed to be a casual lunch to get everyone together but somehow it became a bit too formal. I felt the pressure to ensure everything was in tip top shape and to be a gracious host. In the end, it should have been just a chill out session between colleagues. However, everything went well. I realize that to ensure a team work together effectively and efficiently, we would need to acknowledge and understand each other as normal human beings not only as colleagues.

As Chinese New Year is just around the corner, the chocolate team is required to set up a modular display unit also known as MDU at the reception area and boardroom to create awareness about the Chinese New Year packaging for Cadbury. After meeting up with Koh Tsu Lynn, the assistant brand manager for Cadbury and Toblerone under the count line and gifting category. This was a fun project to handle as I had the chance to understand and execute proper merchandising. To set up a piece of point of sale material requires extensive planning and precision is providing the proper guidelines.