Meet Kerstin Schöfisch

What do flags and licorice have in common? They are both prominent in Helsinki, Finland, says GROW participant Kerstin Schöfisch.  "It looks like the Finns hang out their national flags in the streets every second day and I was always wondering what they were celebrating," she says. "Even my colleagues could not tell me. And the Finns seem to be crazy about licorice, as there is licorice ice cream, yoghurt, donuts, coffee, etc. First it tasted a little bit irritating for me, but when you get used to the flavor, you will love it."

At Carlsen Verlag in Hamburg, Schöfisch is a marketing manager responsible for developing consumer and trade strategies, sales promotion and key account marketing as well as CRM strategies, dialog marketing and social media campaigns for young adult books such as Harry Potter, The Twilight Saga and the Percy Jackson Series.

But this summer, Schöfisch is spending three months at book publisher Tammi in Helsinki as a social media specialist and marketing manager for children and young adult books. "My job is to develop a social media strategy for the children's book clubs, including a market and competitor analysis as well as a communication and marketing concept with main focus on customer relationship management, social commerce and referral marketing," she says.

Schöfisch says she applied for GROW due to curiosity. "I wanted to get out of my daily routine to have some totally new experiences, to switch perspectives and face new challenges," she says. "The book market in Finland works totally differently from the German book market, so I learned a lot about different ways and new possibilities for customer dialog and direct marketing. To combine that with my experiences in social media marketing was very interesting and exciting and I will take home lots of new ideas as well."

Schöfisch also takes home a funny story about how small the world really is. "I had to go to the dentist here in Helsinki," she says. "So I just picked one out of hundreds in the address book and it turned out that I chose the one who happened to be the owner of my apartment. What are the odds?"

But it was the people she met on a daily basis that made her trip so great. "My favorite thing about the exchange is all the nice, warm-hearted people and colleagues I met over here," Schöfisch says. "And I fell in love with Helsinki. I will definitely miss all my colleagues here at Tammi, and I will miss Helsinki with all the wonderful places close to the ocean."

Naturally, Schöfisch highly recommends the GROW program to others. "If you have the chance to take part in GROW, go for it!" she says. "It is definitely one of the best experiences you can have!"