On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Lotus brand, Mao Jingbo will continue to write a new story of her and the "three" with "three things", opening a new year of Lotus brand marketing.
Text |Liu Yan.
The first stop of my career as a luxury brand marketing manager in a car company was the Audi brand owned by FAW-Volkswagen, a Sino-German joint venture. At that time, Audi was just starting out in China, and there were a lot of Germans in the team, and I was very good at German at that time, and I even knew a lot of German proverbs.
There is a proverb that sticks out to me today because of the first dealership-level event I did when I was at the helm of Audi's marketing department – the opening ceremony of the 4S store of Beijing Zhongrunfa in March 2000, Audi's first standard showroom in China.
This event is of historic significance, all parties attach great importance to it, and because of too much attention, FAW, FAW-Volkswagen, Audi Germany, Audi China, dealers, and public relations companies have all intervened in the planning of the event, which has increased internal friction and reduced efficiency. In the end, the "three-person leadership team" led by the leaders of our main three parties completed the event perfectly. These three people were me, then the head of Audi's marketing department, Mao Jingbo, then the general manager of Ruder Finn's public relations, and Yu Dan, then the public relations director of Audi China. At that time, these three girls were in their prime and their battle value was full.
After the event, the German leaders at that time sent an email to the three of us to thank and congratulate us, using this German proverb: alle gute dinge sind dreiGood things come in three.
Another creative highlight of the event was the use of a super large curtain to wrap the entire exhibition hall building from the outside, making a real "unveiling". This was quite avant-garde more than twenty years ago, but also a bit "fee". So we reused this set of materials at the opening ceremonies of the new showrooms in Shanghai and Zhuhai, which is much more economical than doing three events independently. At the celebration party after the successful conclusion of the third event, Mao Jingbo and I coincidentally said the same sentence: Good things come in three!
Time is in a hurry, and it is in its prime. The next time I heard Mao Jingbo mention "good things come in three" was 23 years later, in 2023 - on the "Lotus Day" on March 29. After more than 20 years of market experience and years of precipitation, Mao Jingbo is more confident and firm under the blessing of strength, and what remains unchanged is that the passion is still full, beautiful and elegant.
At this time, Mao Jingbo ** is the third luxury brand in her career - Lotus, one of the world's three major supercar brands.
In this speech on the track, Mao Jingbo said: I have a soft spot for the number "three". I firmly believe that "starting with one, becoming three". Taking the first step in anything is the hardest, but if you can do three things well, you can build a solid foundation for success.
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Lotus brand, Mao Jingbo will continue to write a new story of her and the "three" with "three things", opening a new year of Lotus brand marketing.
As a close friend of Mao Jingbo, I witnessed her success in leading the Lincoln brand to achieve performance growth and brand enhancement with the "three insistences" in the Lincoln era.
At noon on the first day of the Shanghai Auto Show, Mao Jingbo and I had a quick meeting and exchange at the Lotus booth. At this time, the three things Mao Jingbo wants to do for Lotus have just begun, and I will continue to witness them.
The authors of this article, Liu Yan and Mao Jingbo, took a group photo at the booth.
Brand revival. Brand revival" was listed as the first thing to be done by Mao Jingbo.
In the automotive circle, Mao Jingbo's ability and achievements in building luxury brands have become ceiling-like among professional managers. After helping Audi achieve initial success in China as a PR company, Mao Jingbo joined Mercedes-Benz China in 2007, during which he served as Vice President of Marketing, General Manager of Peking University, and Executive Vice President of Beijing Benz Sales Company. Later, she joined Lincoln, fully unleashing her deep understanding of luxury brands and super execution, and brought Lincoln in the trough to the best era in history in four years, which once became the "Lincoln phenomenon" in the industry. In November 2022, Mao Jingbo joined Lotus. At this time, Lotus has finished the last fuel car off the assembly line, as the first luxury supercar brand to fully transform into electric, "running" into a new track. Mao Jingbo, a practical master of luxury brands, ushered in a new challenge.
In this regard, Mao Jingbo has a clear understanding and action ideas.
First of all, for Mao Jingbo, Lotus is a legendary brand that is adored with enthusiasm, and the brand identity brought by its brand history, track genes, technical accumulation and new strategy to embrace the new era is enough to arouse her love and dedication.
Secondly, at the moment when the old brand is transforming and new brands are frequently emerging, when the "volume" is everywhere and the "pan-branding" is disturbing the car market, Mao Jingbo firmly believes that it is necessary to do brand building, and to create a luxury brand that belongs to Lotus, has a British luxury pedigree, injects new connotations into the new era, and resonates with Lotus user values.
In a short period of time, she led the team to clarify the brand goals, vision, and strategic path, and found the brand proposition "for the drivers" that the Lotus brand resonates with users: everything is for the drivers. The key word is drivers, that is, the core of this slogan, which is a high-level "homophonic stalk": from drivers to drivers, from "driver" to "driver". The Lotus brand has brought users more than the performance and driving pleasure related to the driver, and has been upgraded to everyone's control of their own career and life, as well as the resulting sense of achievement beyond themselves.
This is like Mao Jingbo, who controls his career and life while controlling the brand; Just like the typical Lotus owners I met at the Shanghai Auto Show, they chose Lotus based on the excellent experience of the product, but also because of the resonance of the Lotus brand spirit, they pursue the pleasure of driving, but also actively control life, the courage to break through, the pursuit of the ultimate.
Third, Mao Jingbo, who has more than 20 years of experience in luxury brand marketing, clearly knows that luxury is already an overused word, and luxury itself has been constantly redefined with the development of the times. But also because of its deep cultivation of luxury brands for many years, she believes that users choose luxury brands, and the excellence of products is an indispensable foundation, but not all.
Lotus has many different qualities, one of which is its origins and pedigree, which is British luxury. What is the connotation and charm of British luxury? How does Lotus' British luxury fit the demands of the new generation of users? How can we not only inherit but also renew, grasp the boundary of "change and change", and lead the luxury concept of the new era? All these propositions have been listed on the "to do list" of Mao Jingbo's "brand revival".
Cadillac entered China before Lincoln, but Mao Jingbo allowed Lincoln to lead the definition of "American luxury"; Jaguar Land Rover has been deeply involved in China for many years, and whether Mao Jingbo can make the latecomer Lotus become the definition of "British luxury", the answer may not be important, the important thing is that Mao Jingbo's road to building a Lotus luxury brand has begun.
Build a champion product.
The second thing is to create a champion product.
8. Entering the Shanghai Auto ShowIn Hall 1, Lotus became the focus of the audience with its overwhelming momentum with a dazzling 27-meter ultra-long screen and the might of "Lotus Yellow". From the world's fastest mass-produced pure electric supercar Evija, to the "swan song of fuel vehicles" EMIRA, to the world's first pure electric supercar SUV Lotus Eletre, the blockbuster assembly has feasted the eyes of car fans.
The Eletre is currently the main model of Lotus, which inherits the heritage of supercar design and track engineering, and brings Lotus's "ultimate driving pleasure" to pure electric life cars for the first time, and has attracted a large number of fans since its launch. On March 29, Lotus held the "Lotus Day" at the Shanghai International Circuit, opening the first batch of Lotus eletre deliveries.
According to Feng Qingfeng, CEO of Lotus Group, Eletre is the first living car of Lotus under the "Sino-British Twin Engine" strategy, integrating the advantages of all parties and grinding a sword in five years, and it is a unique and scarce product in the specific market segment of million-level electric luxury.
It is reported that when developing the promotion plan, the long list was full of the advantages of Eletre summarized by the Lotus team. Mao Jingbo quickly peeled off the cocoon, went to the rough and fine, and cut the mess with a quick knife, in accordance with the "first".
1. Only. 1. The "best" three principles, personally extracted the "nine ultimate highlights" of ELETRE, including aerodynamic pioneer, track-level intelligence, the first domestic first-class exterior mirror, the world's fastest dual-motor mass-produced pure electric SUV, EPA electric performance architecture, full 800-volt high-voltage architecture, 6D intelligent chassis and 75 years of tuning experience, the British treasure-level audio brand KEF, and the ultimate exquisite interior luxury details.
Mao Jingbo believes that these good stories that are enough to constitute "champion products" are based on "champion thinking" according to the "three principles" of selection. In the Lotus team, "winner mindset" is a word that comes up a lot. Mao Jingbo injected "winning faith" into the team with this concept, and created champion products with "champion team".
Introducing a new and iconic Lotus user experience.
The third thing is to create a "Lotus Extreme Driving Experience Center".
This is also Lotus's first project in terms of user experience. Mao Jingbo's team hopes to create an "ultimate driving control system" for China's "drivers" from functional experience, lifestyle experience to value experience, which coincides with Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory. Lotus' signature Extreme Driving Control system allows users to experience Lotus' unique "Extreme Driving" charm and unique brand culture step by step, including F1 professional track-level driving experience, top-notch car culture experience (such as Goodwood), and a variety of themed experiences.
In Mao Jingbo's vision, this IP will deeply integrate Lotus's unique ultimate driving control and new British luxury, creating an unparalleled Lotus iconic user experience, attracting users to co-create with experience, realizing product planting, stimulating brand identity, and forming a brand potential effect from trust, appreciation to belief by users.
This plan has just begun to be implemented, but Mao Jingbo is confident in it and will continue to push forward. It is foreseeable that if it can be perfectly realized, it will be a great "welfare" for Lotus users, and the "bonanza" value accumulated by Lotus in the past 75 years will be fully unleashed, empowering the new era of the Lotus brand and making it unique.
This is exactly what Mao Jingbo thinks the luxury brand Lotus should look like.
Write at the end. In 2018, Feng Qingfeng, CEO of Lotus Group, first proposed the Lotus Vision80 strategy, which includes a 10-year brand revival plan, that is, to complete the brand's comprehensive transformation to electrification and intelligence on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Lotus brand in 2028.
In the first half of the vision80 strategy, Lotus completed the work of laying a solid foundation, including comprehensive product transformation, global upgrading, smart factory production, the advent of electric performance architecture, and the promotion of dual carbon green actions.
2023 is regarded by Lotus as the decisive year to open the second half of the vision80. Under a clear strategy, the key to a decisive battle lies in the strong implementation of the strategy. Strategies that can't be implemented are just slogans.
Lotus welcomed the right people at the right time. In my opinion, in addition to Mao Jingbo's excellent characteristics of professionalism, dedication and professionalism, her strong execution is where her hard core strength lies in the continuous success of driving the two major luxury brands.
No tacit understanding, no cp. Feng Qingfeng once expressed a point of view: strategy is execution. At the node of Lotus's decisive year, the addition of Mao Jingbo gave Feng Qingfeng the strongest partner, and also gave his "golden sentence" the best annotation.
Less than half a year after joining Lotus, Mao Jingbo has outlined three things to do for Lotus and has already launched a landing action. The results of the three things are obviously premature, and the road is long and the challenges are everywhere.
But as Mao Jingbo's team interprets for the drivers, for drivers, "beyond the destination, beyond the journey, what is more important is the fun of driving".
Although the Lotus version of "good things come in three" has just begun, and "three lives and all things" is still a vision, I still believe that in the Lotus era under Mao Jingbo's control, for the drivers must be more than just a slogan. It will inject strong vitality into the spiritual core of the Lotus brand, bring the brand closer to users, let the brand go further, let Lotus and car owners win-win, and realize the two-way rush of "driver".
It's a unique path for Lotus because "there's only one Lotus in the world".
Similarly, there is only one Mao Jingbo in the workplace of the automobile circle. How the "driver" Mao Jingbo will drive the brand road under the "Lotus mode" is really worth blessing and looking forward to.