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High office: Seeger not only becomes responsible for sales and marketing worldwide at Mercedes, but joins Daimler’s board of management – a move that comes as the company seeks to increase the number of women in senior positions and “rejuvenate” its top management team.

High office: Seeger not only becomes responsible for sales and marketing worldwide at Mercedes, but joins Daimler’s board of management – a move that comes as the company seeks to increase the number of women in senior positions and “rejuvenate” its top management team.

MERCEDES-BENZ has announced a number of key global appointments, including Britta Seeger as the company’s incoming sales and marketing chief and Ola Kallenius as the new head of research and development.

Currently president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz in Turkey, Ms Seeger will officially take up the all-important global sales and marketing job on January 1, 2017, succeeding Mr Kallenius who, due to the retirement of Thomas Weber, takes responsibility for group research at Daimler and Mercedes-Benz Cars development.

Meanwhile, Sabine Scheunert has been named head of a newly created digital unit focusing on customer relations and the rapidly expanding ‘Mercedes me’ network, while head of global resources, labour relations, IT and Mercedes-Benz Vans, Wilfried Porth, has had his contract extended until 2022.

Ms Seeger, who has worked for Daimler since 1992 and at one point served as head of Mercedes-Benz in South Korea, will join the company’s board of management when she takes up the role – a move that some media outlets have described as unconventional given her predecessors have only been offered a boardroom seat once they were entrenched in the position.

Daimler has copped criticism in the past for being slow to appoint women to its board, however chief executive Dieter Zetsche has recently put renewed emphasis on promoting women.

According to reports, the current goal is to increase the proportion of women in senior management positions to 20 per cent by 2020, up from 15 per cent at the end of 2015 and just five per cent in 2005.

It is also aiming to increase its female buyer base to 30 per cent worldwide by 2020.

Ola Kallenius

Ola Kallenius

Daimler AG’s supervisory board chairman Manfred Bischoff said Ms Seeger’s appointment would “rejuvenate” the senior management team at the German luxury car giant.

“The Mercedes-Benz brand is the heart of Daimler AG. The marketing and sales of Mercedes-Benz Cars is the most important connection with our customers, and therefore has a key function at the group,” Mr Bischoff said.

“With Britta Seeger, we are appointing an experienced executive who has successfully held leading positions in sales worldwide since 2013. The appointment of Britta Seeger also rejuvenates the board of management and shows that we have outstanding women for board of management positions.

“With her qualifications in business administration and her international experience, Britta Seeger will further strengthen the position of Mercedes-Benz Cars with the premium brands Mercedes-Benz and Smart worldwide.”

Ms Scheunert’s role as head of digital and IT will see her responsible for a rapidly expanding department that will have more than 100 newly created jobs filled in the coming months as Mercedes invests heavily, and quickly, “in the development of its digital competence as part of its ‘best customer experience’ sales and marketing initiative”.

This a cross-departmental joint initiative between marketing and IT and will focus on developing and strengthening the ‘Mercedes me’ program, which sets out to improve communication with customers via new technology and includes informal retail stores that are more like casual meeting places than traditional dealerships.

The latter will begin rolling out in Australia next year with an outlet in Melbourne’s CBD.

“To meet the challenges of digitalisation as effectively as possible, we are adopting new approaches in terms of our organisation and our processes,” said Mercedes-Benz Cars head of marketing Jens Thiemer.

“We will be fundamentally changing the structure and modus operandi of our digital sales activities. We want to become faster and more agile, working in small teams with flat hierarchies, and considerably increase our own digital real net output ratio.

“This move sees us implementing a true change in culture, which will make us even fitter for the digital age.”

Ms Scheunert has worked in the automotive industry since 1998 and is a former general manager of marketing (central eastern Europe) at BMW. In 2010 she moved to PSA Peugeot Citroen, where she was head of worldwide customer relationship management for all PSA brands.

Early last year, Ms Scheunert took responsibility for the Citroen brand’s business in China, a move that reportedly made her the country’s first female CEO.

By Terry Martin

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