How realistic is it to get into PMM role from a Brand / Product Manager role? (previous experience in a Consumer Goods company)

I think it’s very realistic! As a Brand expert, you know how to tell stories through brand attributes. As for product management, it's more related to product marketing. So you probably work with PMMs a lot and are familiar with the operating rhythms. Based on what you shared, you already have a good amount (and diverse) of product marketing experience.

If you’re not getting interview invites, one reason could be that it’s not clear that you have all the PMM experience that you’ve listed. I’d go two ways:

1. Create a section to your resume just for your product marketing experience. This is where you can list out what you’ve done (e.g launched a product to produce X results). But make sure to include the output you drove with each of your bullet points. It’s great that you did user research, but what did that ultimately lead to? 

2. Customize your resume/experiences for every application. For PMM positions, there will (almost always) be differences between what a hiring manager at company X needs and what a hiring manager at company Y needs. So customize your resume for each application. This helps to make your experience more relevant to the specific role and enhances your chances of getting to at least the first interview round.

Good luck!

There are definitely some transferable skills between a CPG Brand manager and a product marketing manager:

• Customer research/insights/market research
• Foundational marketing skills (market segmentation, targeting, positioning)
• Cross-functional collaboration, influence without authority, communication, etc.

However, the applicability of these skills to a product marketing manager role depends heavily on the type of company you are targeting. Product Marketing Manager roles are prevalent in tech companies, and especially abundant at B2B/enterprise tech companies.

Tech companies live and die by innovation: they are constantly creating original categories, destroying old ones, and launching entirely new products. This keeps product marketers busy because each new product needs ICP definitions, buyer persona/journey work, positioning, messaging, etc. This also means that PMMs are constantly learning new things, and that some measure of subject matter expertise is necessary in most PMM roles. 

So if you're looking to break in to PMM from a CPG company, take some time to think about the areas you want to invest energy in to getting to a basic level of subject matter understanding: FinTech? EdTech? Cybersecurity? DevOps? Each of these areas will have audiences, concepts, language, and conventions that will make your job transition easier if you understand them.

So, in summary, it is realistic to go from brand manager to PMM, you just need to focus your search and emphasize the transferable marketing skills you have and articulate them in the context of the space you're looking to enter.