Name: Imogen Hibberd
Age: 28
Job title: Social media manager
Company & location: VFC, Remote
Education: University of Nottingham, English Literature and Language
Why did you decide to go for a career in food & drink? I have always been interested in food and drink, be it cooking fun and unique dishes or trying new restaurants.
As a vegan, I have always wanted my career to overlap with my morals and ethics, and ensure what I do with my career has a positive impact on our world.
As soon as I realised the detrimental impact our food choices can have, I wanted to work in the food and drink industry to help change that and encourage people to move away from eating or using animal products, and instead try the incredible vegan products available.
Explain your job to us in a sentence (or two): I manage the global social media and digital marketing strategy for VFC. This includes organic content strategy and creation, paid advertising strategy and implementation, influencer marketing, working with content creators, email marketing, website management, and SEO.
What does a typical day look like for you? Working in social media and digital marketing means my work is very varied. I could be ideating and planning our social media content for the next quarter with my team, building an advertising strategy for a campaign, briefing content creators, launching email marketing campaigns, or filming a stunt or vox pop for content. Every day is different!
Tell us about how you went about applying for your job: When I applied for the role, VFC hadn’t launched yet and even the name ‘VFC’ was still up in the air. I was the first official employee of VFC, that’s my claim to fame! This meant that the recruitment process was a little bit different from how we recruit now, as my interviews were with the co-founders, Matthew and Adam.
There were two stages, an initial interview to get to know me and my experience and how I could fit into the role, then in the second round I was tasked with coming up with a digital launch strategy for VFC and social media content ideation. This helped them evaluate how I would manage a brand that was starting from the ground up and how creative I was.
The toughest question I remember was the founders asking me how I would launch the brand on social media, from what platforms I would concentrate on, to what content and ad strategy I would implement. This is a fairly unique scenario, as this wasn’t simply campaign planning or launching a new platform, it was considering how to launch a brand in a highly competitive space with a big impact.
“Some people consider it simply making ‘pretty posts’ or ‘scrolling through TikTok all day’, but working in social media and digital marketing requires a finely tuned set of skills”
What’s the best part about working for a food & drink company? I enjoy how it is such a fast-paced industry, requiring businesses to constantly evolve and innovate.
Whilst this can be challenging, it is really exciting, particularly from a social media and digital perspective. As VFC is a relatively new player in the market and rapidly growing, we are regularly launching into new retailers and countries, or launching new products, so we always have an exciting campaign to work on.
I love coming up with unique and engaging ways to communicate these on our channels. Working in food and drink, you really get to flex your strategic and creative muscles and are never bored!
And what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in food & drink? In terms of working in social media in food and drink, there are a lot of misconceptions about how involved and difficult the role is. Some people consider it simply making ‘pretty posts’ or ‘scrolling through TikTok all day’, but working in social media and digital marketing requires a finely tuned set of skills that is very unique to the industry. Just like any other avenue of marketing, it requires advanced strategic planning, research and insight, and, of course, creativity.
It is also sometimes considered a low-pressure job. However, when you’re a social media manager, you have the entire brand image in your hands. That is a high-pressure position that demands results and a constantly evolving campaign strategy.
What advice would you give to other young people looking to get into the food & drink industry? Get experience early on. Whether that is volunteering or doing work experience with a food brand, or even an agency that has food and drink clients.
Start getting this at university, as nowadays, a degree alone is not enough. Reach out to people working for the brands directly on LinkedIn and see if they are open to work experience or even shadowing, you may get lucky! Or work with your university careers team, they have so many opportunities available for students.
What’s your ultimate career dream? My goal is to become head of marketing or head of digital marketing at a leading vegan food brand. It is really important to me that the brands I work with are in touch with their brand mission and use their platforms to not only sell their amazing products but educate their audience about the environmental, health, or animal impact of their products versus the animal-based alternatives.
I would love to lead the marketing strategy and team of a food brand like this, which is why my current role at VFC is such a good fit.
Interested in finding out more about food & drink careers? Check out GrocerJobs for the latest vacancies
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