What is unique about working at Henkel?
Ever since I joined, I’ve loved working in and leading diverse and international teams. Having a multitude of personalities and cultures makes the experience so fun and rewarding. In fact, I’ve met some of my closest friends during my time here. I believe it’s important to always stay curious and open minded, so that you can learn from the people you work with every day. Also, it’s important not to shy away from difficulties, but tackle them proactively.
Sybille's Career Path
Which milestone of your career are you most proud of?
I believe you need to celebrate small, everyday achievements as much as you do the bigger ones: like my first product relaunch on Palette Intensive Color Cream, Europe’s No 1 Color Brand, or my first new color brand launch for Schwarzkopf Nectra Color in 2014. Our viral video “Love creates Beauty” hit 1 million views within the first few days. It was produced on a tiny budget and we took some risks by going in a different direction, but it was so worth it. We managed to land quite a coup at the time, ending up with over 19 million views. The cherry on top was seeing it nominated as “most romantic viral video” by some quite renowned institutions.
What was your greatest learning doing an influencer campaign in 2015?
Again, being one of the first to try things out was both exciting and challenging at the same time. I love that feeling of believing in your project so much that you’re willing to go the extra mile and move mountains to make it happen. This only comes from daring to be different and thinking outside of the box in the first place. Of course, it also requires resilience and self-motivation to deal with potential set-backs or uncertainties along the way too. Instagram was emerging around that time and we didn’t have much experience, or big budgets for got2b back then. That meant we decided to leverage the possibilities of digital and connected them with an offline experience for our consumers to create an unprecedented 360 campaign across all touchpoints.
What is the most important tip you have for job starters?
Make use of the opportunities you get along the way, dare to use your voice and speak up. Don’t ever be afraid. Consider feedback as a tool to grow and reflect upon. Stay curious and true to yourself, experiment and embrace failures as a means to develop, learn and move on. Plus, remember to keep having fun while you’re at it! And last but not least: love it, leave it or change it.
What challenge do you want to tackle next?
Oh, I love a good challenge and I am in the midst of one already. I’m glad that I can leverage my rich set of experiences and skills, yet there is still so much to learn. In my new role, I am an “entrepreneur in residence”, with the mandate to experiment with and for our consumers, tearing down walls to discover new insights — it’s so much more than the next product innovation or line extension. We think big, investigate potential service ideas, and aim to discover and develop new, scalable business models for new targets in an experience-driven world. It will be key to be as close as possible to our consumers and learn from them – at the end of the day we are all consumers, aren’t we?