In a major multinational company like Electrolux, the spotlight often falls on senior managers and other people with public roles. In a new series of stories, we’ve instead asked our employees whose stories they think are worth telling; which colleagues truly embody the purpose of our company? First up is Kamilla Dala, who helps Electrolux shape living for the better by deepening our understanding of the consumer and what sustainability means to them.
Trend spotting and paying attention to what people are talking about are second nature to Kamilla Dala, Consumer Experience Insight Manager for Marketing Major Appliances EMEA. It’s this trait that directly led to her career in marketing. But fresh out of an advertising program in San Francisco, she wouldn’t have expected a job at Electrolux in her hometown of Stockholm to be the dream job. It was.
What enticed you to join the Electrolux marketing team?
As soon as I met the team five years ago, I realized this is a really fun place to be as a marketer. It’s such an international company. And this is the place to be if you want to be part of creating something new, someplace where they are trying things, where there is no dogma.
There’s no “this is how we’ve always done it.” Everything is up for grabs. I really like that. I’ve come to realize that I am bored by the routine.
Why are you so passionate about your role?
People inspire me and I am passionate about changing how we communicate products or features as well as how to drive that change. To discover what we need to know, we need to spend time with consumers, talk to them and also pick their brains about their lives and cooking challenges. We need to understand what they aspire to do and how we can help make a difference.
I enjoy finding these things out and bringing all that knowledge to work and finally letting consumers know how we can help them in the home with our solutions.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
Getting closer to people and consumers. Finding out what they like and don’t like is what I love. I just finished up three focus groups where we were testing creative concepts. Afterwards, a lot of them said: “it’s like you are talking about me and my life in my kitchen.” It was exciting to know that we were connecting with them.
What do you think it takes to succeed at Electrolux?
While there is a smorgasbord of opportunities, to be successful you have to grab opportunities and run with them. You can come into any role and shape it for yourself. Not just doing things as they are always done or waiting for opportunities is key.
When I joined Electrolux how we communicated about our products was not given a lot of attention. But we could see from research that people came to our web sites to learn more about our products. So I thought here is something that really needs to be done – so I grabbed this idea and ran with it.
Working with insights has been exciting. Things like steam technology or spin speed don’t make a lot of sense to our consumers who are looking to replace their oven or washer. So I think we need to talk more about what that means to your food, cooking and clothes, and not so much about equipment, for instance. We need to connect to what people do and what are they passionate about, moving away from technical specs and instead describing what the true benefits and opportunities are.
What does shape living for the better mean to you?
To me, it means finding what people are aspiring to and how can we help, especially in the home, with our solutions. By using new cooking and laundry technologies, there are so many stories that we still need to tell consumers, such as to reduce food waste. Consumers are interested and want to contribute to living more sustainably.
We need to start looking at things from a sustainability point of view. We need to look at features in a different way. How can this contribute to a person who wants to reduce their meat consumption or not buy as many clothes? We are just at the beginning of this journey and need to find ways to work together with food manufacturers, for example. I think that is exciting.
Finally, what does an insight manager do?
They key objective is to lead, develop and implement the thinking of the consumer experience through highlighting the needs, wants, attitudes, emotions and behaviors of our core consumers. An insight manager develops and story tells these insights and trends after executing various research projects for products-, marketing-, communications- and brand development.
