Martin Trepáč

Martin Trepáč, Director of Marketing CZ & SK at Philip Morris CR a.s.

Martin Trepáč is one of those admirable individuals who have their career goals well in control. He figures that most of his success was due to “being in the right place at the right time.” In fact, there was no hard-earned achievement after a series of failures or a sudden lucky win. Simply put, Martin studied diligently and practiced what interested him, and hence, excelled at it.

In his thirties, Martin became the marketing manager at Philip Morris International Management SA and subsequently became the Brand Director of Marlboro at Philip Morris GmbH. Two and a half years later, in February 2014, he secured the position of Marketing Director at Phillip Morris ČR a.s., where he currently works.

“I realized early enough to listen to and accept others’ opinions, while I was improving my education by studying in the MBA program at UNYP. In my classes, I met students who worked in various industries and realized that, although marketing is primarily about intuition and common sense, spending a great deal of time in one field can influence the way you think. However, by incorporating the opinions of others, you open the door to career development and personal growth.

For example, we were tasked with preparing a strategy for crisis communication in a specific case. One colleague, let’s say from the automobile industry, came up with a completely different scenario than a colleague from the cosmetic industry, and neither one had the same idea as the colleague from banking. Furthermore, no one was correct. Eventually, we took the best aspects of everyone’s ideas in the group and created a great strategy that worked.

I started my MBA at UNYP because I needed to move my degree from marketing, which I previously earned as an EUBA in Bratislava, to an international level. Secondly, I wanted to enhance my knowledge in finance, law, and other related fields to improve as a business professional. And at the time, I was in a rut that I needed to get out of. I think it went well.

Thanks to the time spent at UNYP and the interactions with people from different environments, as I mentioned before, I managed to get a better overview, network, and learned more about benchmarking.”

Published by Forbes CR on 06/05/2015.

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