DEM Global Brands Marketing Manager: Seher Kale
First of all, it is wonderful to meet you when you are in such an active period. How do you spend your days recently?
A busy summer period is waiting for us, and we are making our preparations according to that busy pace. We are experiencing a very tiring but that much of an enjoyable period. We will continue to be the first choice of consumers and brands with the help of quality service and product, to provide sustainability with this awareness in the new season. We will mainly work on corporate communication of DEM Global. Besides, we will make our products to be known more in the sector by way of an educational tour and social media projects across Turkey. We plan to support our activities with point-based and brand-based works.
We are getting ready for summer, what are you busy with especially in these days? As you know events has gained speed and you are here to expand the brands that we represent alcoholic beverage market.
There will be a density in both open (hotel&restaurant) and closed channels (chain store and grogshops) this summer. In the direction of our goals, we are making progress with appropriate strategies for our brand identity. Using the social media in the correct way, in which rising generation is very active, and following the trends will be very important for us. Special works for brands and collaboration with different disciplines take up an important place on our agenda, we conducted multi-disciplinary activities through winter and we will continue them in the summer season.
How many years have you been within Dem Global Brands? I want to talk about your position in alcohol sector as a woman manager in detail.
I have been within Dem Global for about a year; however, I have been a manager in different global beverage brands for 5 years. Even if our sector seems like a male dominant sector, this situation is changing. It is becoming more balanced and we, as woman professionals, try to direct the sector by taking more active and strategic places. If I speak about my company; it has a balanced and peaceful atmosphere, we are progressing and expanding our company with anti-sexist policies. I feel lucky as a woman manager because our sector is an incredibly supportive, developer and sophisticated. It provides many development areas in intellectual senses and at the same time it is very dynamic because it always creates opportunities for meeting and working with well informed and private people from different disciplines.
As Dem Global Brands, you are defending that you manage a strategic portfolio, which is competitive and has sustainable expanding potential. At this point, is it difficult to manage the sustainability policy? Could you inform us about the functioning period?
We are official distributor of many well-known brands in Turkey. We make progress in channel expansions in direct proportion to company’s expansion. As a team, we try to deliver the greatest performance by changing our focus cyclically. Being agile, visionary and quick decision maker take a great importance in the point of sustainability. And we are taking advantage of our dynamic and agile structure.
How do you evaluate food and beverage sector in Turkey? Do you think being a woman manager makes a difference?
We have a conformed sector with world trends. We follow the latest developments closely and make these innovations quickly. In our country, consumers gladly consume the lately popular beverages abroad. Brands are becoming different when they are classic, beverage choices are changing. Mixed beverages accompany to food and these trends are quite popular. Besides, whole good chef cooks are supported by companies for collaboration such as us. Chef cooks are preparing food by thinking which beverage accompanies well with which food. Trend is evolving to quality food – quality beverage harmony. We see the reflection of this harmony in Turkey.
I believe being a woman manager makes difference in the sector. I think women’s communication and empathy skills improved in social period by way of natural selection. And I observe they can use these skills. For this reason, I think it makes difference because our sector needs accurate communication and empathy with our consumers. Apart from that,it makes difference not only because I am a woman but also, I like to mix and apply different disciplines, because I took a sociology-based education. Making use of them usually leads me to produce creative projects.
When you look at consumers, the main reason of changeover is women. Women have great roles in food and beverage choices. This change shows up clearly when you look at which segment is increased in sales. In addition, women can generally develop a point of view in every sector, and this is one of the important factors that brings success.
DEM Global Brands makes its woman employees feel very precious with its corporate culture. It carries over the managerial staff, because our CEO, Kerem Kerimoglu is an egalitarian, fair and new generation manager in general. For this reason, he organizes and manages his team in this manner. I am working in a company which gives a day off for its woman employees on every 8th of March and wants them to make a day for themselves.Moreover, I can happily say that I am supported by not only our team but also our stakeholders.
We wonder about your recent Academy event. Is it a new constitution? What is its context?
ACADEMY is a program which lasts for 2 days. Our business partners participate in the program and it is an educational and exciting as well. It consists of various workshops, product and brand expressions, it provides both spending time beatifically and endowing themselves new things. We can say that it is an inspiring activity.
How often do you conduct the Academy?
We plan to conduct Academy once a year, but when we organized it for the first time, it was welcomed warmly. For this reason, we may organize it once more, we will plan it in the upcoming days.
Your company have been improving and expanding since 1992. What are your primary goals for the future?
New brands joined to our portfolio. Our main priority is to expand our company and portfolio. We have many requests from many different global groups and different categories; however, we are very selective to join them in our portfolio.
We improved ourselves and became more powerful in closed channels, especially in the pandemic. Concordantly, we aim to make progress in open channel as well by gaining more strength.
We will continue to produce projects and realize them in both activity and digital channels by means of our multi-disciplinary perspective. Digitalization takes an important place in our forward-looking goals. We are renovating our marketing strategies, business manners and business processes according to fast digital transformation and new technologies. With the help of collaboration, we keep pace with this extensive transformation by way of our quick and agile structure.
Finally, what do you recommend for people who want to enter this sector and intend to do their career in this direction?
Firstly, I suggest young professionals, who want to get into the sector, to follow the world and changing trends closely. We are active in an area shaping according to world’s trends, there is a fast transformation and those who can catch up this transformation is one step ahead. They should let themselves to learn new disciplines by way of benefitting from different disciplines and mixing different fields. They should read global sources, there are many sectoral foreign and rich sources. Moreover, sociological research may add them the understanding of consumer patterns and their societies, I suggest them to read.
