1. Marketing Internship
Symrise
Holzminden, Germany
February 2011 – April 2011
For three months I worked in the marketing department for home and laundry care in
Holzminden, Germany. As an international business student, I have had general business
courses in marketing and related fields, but lacked the practical knowledge of marketing in an
international business itself.
I had the chance to focus on a singe market and learn as much about the competition,
products, innovations, and history of the firms which Symrise is either competing against or
working with. I was not aware how involved Symrise, especially the marking team is, in
overall product development. Symrise does much more than develop smells and flavors, but
uses mega and consumer trends to develop product ideas, even going as far as packing
designs. The relationships between Symrise and its customers is becoming more complex
everyday.
In February, I worked on two projects which helped me get a much better understanding of
the basics of marketing in the home and laundry care department. I worked on a forest
concept PowerPoint. This power summarized the results of a qualitative study done by a
market research agency. I was not familiar with qualitative studies and their applications, but
the results of this study helped me understand how useful a qualitative study is a stepping
stone to a proposable product concept. It was interesting to see how a concept which had
seemingly nothing or very little to do with detergent was made into an entirely feasible
concept with pictures, packaging designs, and even fragrance ideas. Even the input of a
relatively small number of consumers, is enough to gage product direction in the beginning
stages. I was able to use the information in the PowerPoint to summarize it into something
more applicable for presentations to Symrise’s customers.
The second project involved first researching all of the new powder detergents released in
2011 and creating a segmentation system for which they could all be organized by claims.
This was called the ‘Powder Detergent Digest.’ During this project, I learned about the claims
that laundry care products make and in which direction many of the new products are going. I
was able to identify specific trends and products claims and to create a presentation in
Powerpoint form which can be used as a resource, as well as used for the segmentation of
other new powder detergents.
During the three months, I learned a lot about mega trends and consumer trends, something
completely new to me. I had originally imagined that firms would come to Symrise with
fragrance requests for an already developed product. As it turns out, the opposite is often the
case. Products are often maturely developed to include even packing design and fragrance
before being presented to a firm. These ideas often originally stem from trends identified by
outside market research agencies. I had the chance to take part in external brainstorming
sessions where I worked with my colleagues to develop new and creative ideas for laundry
care today and in the future related to consumer trends. I have learned how important
creativity and innovation are in a saturated market. I also had the chance to travel to Berlin
where I met with a marketing agency SelectNY where we combined our ideas with there ideas
to choose feasible concepts. Many of these concepts where then evaluated for a meeting with
Henkel in Düsseldorf. I maintained strong contact with the agency in Berlin during the course
of the Henkel presentation as symrise and SelectNY working to align visions of the final

2. presentation for Henkel. I also did research and created a short presentation about the uses and
benefits of beeswax for Henkel.
I was introduced to many new resources while researching here at Symrise. I became familiar
with Mintel, Datatmonitor, and Symrise’s online photo data bank where pictures and
fragrances descriptions of market products are stored. I had the chance to familiarize myself
with the laundry care market in Europe by researching all of the current products released by
five of the top laundry care firms in Europe (Henkel, Colgate Palmolive, Procter & Gamble,
Beckitt Renckiser, and Unilever). It was interesting to see how the firms created many
different brands, how they were segmented, and how they all competed with each other in the
market. In the end I created another presentation with over 100 products currently sold in the
European market, organized by firm and country. A bit later, this information become more
concrete as we received information from Nielson which gave us the exact revenue numbers
and market shares of all liquid and powder detergents and fabric softeners in Italy, England,
Germany, France, and Spain. I was able to use this information to find exact figures like the
top five brands in each country, the top selling detergents and the changes over the last year in
sales growth as well as sales volume by firm or brand. We could also use this information to
find the popularity of liquid, capsules, powder, etc in each country. I took the top powder
detergents from each country and entered them into the ‘Powder Detergent Digest’ I had
created earlier. It was interesting to see how the most popular detergents in Europe fit into the
segmentation I had created earlier.
The most time consuming project that I did was a private label analysis. I received a folder
full of studies relating to private label. Using this information, online resources, company
websites, and different studies that were accessible, I created an analysis of 12 private label
firms which included information such as the private label brands, strategies, market
positioning in the region, revenues, price and packing comparisons to branded products, and
comparisons of the private label firms to each other.
On March 15th
I went to Freiburg to visit one of the agencies during market research for
Symrise about the beeswax laundry detergent idea. It was very interesting to see how
qualitative study was made. The participants were questioned and we could see how they
found the idea of beeswax in detergents, what detergents they used, what claims could be
accepted, what kind of fragrance it should have as well as bottle design. In the end, we had a
really good idea of what type of product the consumers could be interested in and could make
a solid conclusion for the first stages of product development.
I really enjoyed working in the home and laundry care marketing department. As an
international business major, it was really interesting to explore the field of marketing as a
career. I would now consider marketing as a future career and possibly something I would
like to get my masters in.
Another very important aspect is German language and culture. Having the chance to speak
German everyday as been great for me and as helped me to appreciate the whole experience
even more. Overall, it has been interesting to work in a German firm and experience day to
day life in a successful business like Symrise.