In the past 2023, Mao Jingbo has faced a lot of pressure. But as a top professional manager in the industry, she is used to dealing with all kinds of sudden challenges, but everything that happens in 2023 makes the outside world see that the problems faced by Mao Jingbo are "very difficult". But Mao Jingbo himself always said, "Even if it is difficult, we must persevere, and if we decide, we must take this difficult but correct road." ”
textPot SifuEditLi JiaqiVisual China
On February 1, a summary of Lotus for a year went out of the circle. The interpretation of Lotus's sales, profitability and marketing style in the article caused discussions inside and outside the industry, and for a while, various emotional evaluations pointed to "Mao Jingbo" and this prestigious professional manager of automobiles. But many people who see this content have a perception: this is an emotional evaluation of Lotus.
This sentiment is understandable, after all, Huawei, Xpeng, Weilai, these new car companies, have begun to avoid brands, talk about scale, sales, and profits. According to the rules, Lotus and Mao Jingbo don't talk about what they shouldn't do. But if you insist on asking Lotus, Mao Jingbo, and a team that wants to sell electric sports cars for 1 million according to other people's standards, then no one has anything to say.
* I always want to see that a brand has changed dramatically because of a person's participation. If you can understand this expectation, you can also understand the controversy of today's **. These controversies are based on Mao Jingbo's past achievements, and people are demanding and spurring this executive. The outside world can not only see her former aura, but also see the "contrast" of Lotus today. But many people forget that it takes time for talent to be unleashed. Even if you have such and such expectations, give others more time. In today's impetuous car environment, it is not easy for Lotus and Mao Jingbo to be a brand with premium power and be a real high-end player.
What can a year decide?
There is a saying in China that when you look at people, you have to look at those who are three years old and seven years old. Lotus with Mao Jingbo has only been around for a year. What can an ultra-luxury brand do this past year? What can be changed for a professional manager? It may not be easy to make the tail mark of Lotus without a prefix; It's not easy to reorganize Lotus's organizational framework; It is not easy to make 193 dealers partners.
Li Shufu once said that it will take at least 5-6 years for the system construction of an automobile company. This sentence is a sentence that has been verified by many enterprises with time, money and mistakes. Huawei, a company that is not yet involved in automobile manufacturing, has spent more than five years exploring its business model. Think about how many detours Huawei has taken? How many mistakes were made? Who can say that Huawei's reform and adjustment does not have efficiency, the ability to infringe on commercial goods, and the sense of object of the brand?
Even for an enterprise like Huawei, which has technical support and policy influence, it will take a period of time to explore the road of automobiles. Does it also confirm that in the process of technology integration to business integration, any brand that wants to do a good job in the automobile business needs to be repeatedly polished in terms of system and capabilities.
One year, it's not the time to ask Lotus and Mao Jingbo for results.
An investor from Lotus once commented on Mao Jingbo: "We don't want to be a professional manager in the traditional sense of the word." I wanted her to join Lotus for two reasons: first, to be able to import the values and culture that suited Lotus and build the ideals for this new team of 75 years; The second is to hope that she can solve the problems that other brands have not encountered and don't know how to solve the problems that are about to emerge. In fact, to this day, Lotus investors still recognize Lotus because Lotus is strictly controlling the timing of the nodes it has promised before.
The value of a supercar is not to be highly innovative, but to have continuous iteration of products and technical capabilities, and the ability to brand to guide products. At this point, Porsche and Ferrari have natural commercial moats, which allows them to have a natural commercial position as long as they stand on the stage of electric vehicles. In the future, we can strengthen such a business position through continuous iteration. But Lotus doesn't, a brand that has undergone one business adjustment after another, determines that it can't innovate once or twice, once and for all. This point has been proved by NIO's EP9 and GAC Aion's SSR: in the high-end sports car market, no one can rely on one product for a lifetime.
On the contrary, the strength of the sports car brand is supported by the high iteration of one cyclical product after another, which is what Lotus investors want to see, and it is also what Mao Jingbo hopes to achieve and wants to see.
So in the past year, Mao Jingbo could only endure loneliness and polish. In doing so, it is nothing more than the hope that Lotus will develop in the long term and be more steady. If you don't stabilize the brand and control the tonality, first learn to pile up inventory and put the joint venture brand. I believe that the more than 200 dealers and 6,000 sales employees of Lotus around the world will have the ability to make Lotus's sales "double" several times. The reason why he didn't do this was Mao JingboI don't want to gamble on my career, and I don't want people to wonder what the brand can do when Mao Jingbo leaves Lotus.
Just to sell a car? Or do you want to do the system first? This is a trade-off in front of Mao Jingbo since the day he joined Lotus. Obviously, she chose the latter. Because she knows it,The sports car market has never had a theory of scale. The market's perception of a brand is built up little by little. In Mercedes-Benz and Lincoln, Mao Jingbo has shown the ability to build brands and systems, but they are all based on relatively mature market conditions and relatively mature brand recognition. Although Lotus has a history of more than 70 years, it is a completely innovative enterprise in terms of business mechanism, not only around the issue of brand innovation and market innovation, but also the problem of restructuring is a problem that Mao Jingbo faced on the first day of his arrival at Lotus.
As bystanders, the people on the shore saw that Lotus still had such and such problems today; Imagine that if you were to be a first-hand witness, no one would necessarily be able to come up with more practical solutions for Lotus today. Even so, Mao Jingbo still put"Lotus is the right choice for my career".This sentence hangs on his lips. Mao Jingbo never told this sentence to others, she told it to herself.
Because she believes,No matter how niche it is, as long as the direction is correct, step by step, Lotus can keep the clouds open and see the moon.
Therefore, in the past year, Mao Jingbo rarely talked about how many problems she had dealt with at Lotus. But not talking about the problem does not mean that the problem has not been solved. Test driving as a new car, activities require capital verification. These are not what Mao Jingbo wants to see, but it is up to Mao Jingbo to deal with them one by one; Tariff increases, supply disruptions of core components, and inconsistent coordination between China and the UK. These are not things that Mao Jingbo can change, but they are all faced by Mao Jingbo one by one.
Last year, in Goodwood, England, an elderly Englishman who had worked at Lotus impressed Mao Jingbo. He saw the staff wearing Lotus badges, and tears were about to fall. This was spoken by Clive, the son of Colin Chapman, the founder of the Lotus brand. What made everyone present remember vividly was that he said, "Seeing more and more people like Lotus reminds me of all the ups and downs of the past 75 years, the work codex of my father and mother, and the ** in the dusty photo album where people celebrate winning the championship."
Talking about this, he didn't expect that Lotus today would be as strong as it was back then, and it would be seen by people again.
Perhaps in the eyes of many people, Mao Jingbo has to live a tight life at Lotus, and Lotus's money has to be saved and subtracted. But people don't know that Mao Jingbo said the most to the internal marketing team: "If you want to be in charge, your hands must be tight". Perhaps in the eyes of many people, Lotus can't advertise for marketing, and they don't know that in the eyes of many dealers who are struggling in the front line, Lotus's perception in the terminal market is faulty, and they need more people to know who Lotus is.
At the beginning of last year, Mao Jingbo left two questions for the team as soon as she arrived at Lotus, which is also the task she left for the team in the past year:
1. How to sell electric vehicles to millions?
2. What kind of brand do high-end trams need?
She asked everyone to put their minds right before answering these two questions. She knows that it is very important to be a business and a brand, and the mentality of Lotus must have an opinion and understanding of the situation; You also have to have ideas and methods for solving problems.
In what form? Looking at the problem with a strategic and ordinary mentality, the new normal is first of all the development of the entire industry scale is changing from high-speed to medium-high-speed, everyone must have a mentality, ready to adapt to changes, and let the team do actions, can not be nostalgic for the exponential growth in the past, and begin to be anxious about the decline in growth rate.
The market, consumption, and economy all have cycles, and it is common sense to be fast and slow. It is impossible for any brand to always have a "normal heart" mentality in terms of scale, always 45 degrees upward, up and down.
What's the solution? Lotus's brand building is not a 100-meter sprint but a marathon, and all methods must set a realistic goal, whether it is from the feasibility of allocating resources or from the perspective of stable promotion, the behavior that harms the brand cannot be engaged. All actions must be centered around the brand proposition, brand value, brand genes and brand content, and all actions must be consistent. This is Mao Jingbo's experience, the core of luxury cognition, and the yardstick by which luxury brands can be measured.
Think about two years ago, think about the impression that most people have of Lotus is still "the last aristocracy"; It is the "sinking market" of sports cars; It is a brand that has been picked up by capital to realize its dreams. Think again today, when.
Elites in first- and second-tier cities have been driving Lotus, while lamenting that "fast corners are really fast". Isn't this the year Mao Jingbo came to Lotus, and the year that changed Lotus?
Open experience stores, engage in delivery, brush circles on the track, reorganize the Chinese and British teams, build usage scenarios for users, and extend the value proposition for the brand. This year, Lotus has achieved the best results in terms of business dimension, sales volume and marketing in the history of the world and China, breaking the historical record every month and achieving 170,000 orders. Lotus is worth the wait.
When he was in Lincoln, Mao Jingbo had a famous sayingDo the right thing first, and then do the right thing. Under this cognition, Mao Jingbo's partner Feng Qingfeng will emphasize again and again:I firmly believe in Mr. Mao, I believe in her ability, and I believe in her judgment.
Not long ago, at the end of the Lotus Emeya launch conference, many people described that it had been too long since the car circle had heard such a "pure" car conference. But Mao Jingbo is not in a hurry to finish the story of Lotus, she wants to prove it with actionsLotus has not only a past, but also a future.
It is not easy to do the difficult but right thing, and it is even more difficult to do it persistently. I really hope that the impetuous ** can give Lotus and Mao Jingbo a little more patience and time.