Franz Bruckner

Consultant was never really something I wanted to be. In my mind, that was someone who shows up with a bulging slide deck, stays three weeks, and in the end explains to you what you'd suspected all along (only pricier). The reason I now walk around doing exactly that is that I spent 30 years sitting on the other side of the table, and I know pretty precisely how it feels when someone from outside talks big.

In order, then.

1994, Unilever, Vienna

Marketing Manager for Culinary and Ready-to-Drink. A company that treats brand-building as a craft, and teaches you how packaging, price, distribution and advertising have to work together before anyone in the supermarket actually reaches for the product instead of just nodding along. Back then we got to design almost everything ourselves, right down to our own local productions. Four years in which I learned how market research, product development and communication interlock. A good school.

1998, Red Bull

Nobody outside a handful of markets had heard of the brand. My father assumed it was some American drink and told me not to bother. I started as International Marketing Manager, three years of pure marketing depth, with a level of perfection that either gets on your nerves or stays with you forever (in my case, the latter).

In 2001 they sent me to England as Managing Director, internally the job was called "Quarterback." Roughly translated, that meant building a sales team of 150 people, positioning the brand cleanly, pulling off the turnaround, and hoping the whole time nobody would ask if you actually understood football. After three years, the UK was Europe's biggest and most profitable market. It was also the three years in which I learned the most about leading people, because before that I had barely a clue.

From 2004 I was Head of Northern & Eastern Europe on the Board, responsible for 26 markets, including the market entries into Turkey, Russia and Ukraine. In three years, revenue doubled to more than 700 million euros and profit quadrupled. Reads pretty briskly in two lines. Took a bit longer than that.

2007, innocent drinks

In London I'd fallen for the brand as a consumer and thought Austria should have it too. The three founders saw it differently ("There is no fucking market for it in Austria."). I talked them into it anyway, and for a while, they were right. The financial crisis ate the money earmarked for expansion, the competitors turned out to be more numerous than expected, and building a new category with an unpronounceable name was considerably more of a slog than planned.

It worked out anyway. Market leader in Austria first, then across the entire German-speaking region. When Coca-Cola came on board in 2012, the founders asked me to take on global marketing leadership as well, from 2015 regional responsibility for D-A-CH, and from 2016 Sweden, Denmark and Finland too, where we built our own sales operation and celebrated market leadership.

The real job in those years was a different one than the org chart said. innocent was growing out of startup mode, and the task was to run the company professionally without losing the tone that had made people buy the brand in the first place.

What runs through all of it

Four themes show up across all three stations.

Strategy, meaning the decision of what to give up. That's the uncomfortable part, which is why it tends to get skipped in workshops.

Brand-building, from positioning through to how the product actually sits on the shelf.

Geographic roll-out, meaning what you carry into a new market and what has to be decided fresh on the ground.

Organisational development, because structures that work beautifully for 30 people collapse, loudly, at 150.

And today

From 2019, board work was added, first as Advisory Board Chairman at VITAFY BRANDS until 2022. On the side, I did strategy and brand consulting on a low flame for friends' companies, a mix of hobby and change of pace. I enjoyed it, and the clients usually got something useful out of it too.

In 2024 I hung up the day job and founded FAB Consulting, with starting capital made of experience rather than a business plan. I currently run three advisory mandates: at Erhardt Gruppe as advisor and CEO coach, at ADDVANCE Consumer Health Group as advisory board expert and CEO coach, and at Basenbox as advisor and co-owner. On top of that come around ten consulting mandates, usually shorter and tailored to one specific question.

What I like doing best is talking to founders, owners and board members about their business, developing growth strategies together, and being a sparring partner who's still there once the slides have long been closed.

I do still have a slide deck, by the way. I just rarely use it.