@wheelsaustralia 21
Agent of change
BRITTA SEEGER has 30,000 staff,
and three children. She sits on the
board of one of the world’s largest
companies and has travelled
extensively as part of her role, but
her most memorable moment
occurred in an airport, in Istanbul,
after a tank crushed her car. She
was forced to lie on the ground
by armed soldiers who were busy
conducting a military coup, but
not too busy to point a machine
gun at her head. At that exact
moment, her son rang, to tell
her he was watching the Turkish
uprising on the news and he was
worried about her.
“Everything’s fine, darling, I’m
just very busy at the moment, can
I call you back when I’ve got a bit
more time?” she asked.
Clearly, Seeger is cool in a crisis.
And she’s not afraid of makingbig decisions, either. As the board
member in charge of sales and
marketing for Mercedes-Benz,
she was the one who made the
call to take the company out of
its decades-long sponsorship of
German football, to pour those
many millions into... E-Sports. Yes,
gaming. She believes the future
is millions of people paying to sit
and watch other people play video
games. Apparently huge stadia in
China sell out, for multiple days,
with people willing to watch this
live. And these, Seeger believes, are
her future customers.
“We have to get rid of the
thinking that eSport is not a sport,”
she tells me. “We see hundreds of
millions of people playing these
games and it’s a very interesting
target audience for us. This is
where we want to invest.”
Seeger’s minders later whisper
in my ear that there are more
than 100 million people taking
part in “competitive gaming”,
or eSports, and 500m watching
it. The move away from a safe,
traditional sponsorship like
soccer to something as youth-
focused as eSports is just one
of many changes Seeger, 48,
has campaigned for, including
swapping suits and ties for jeans
and sneakers amongst her staff,
and pushing them to make Benz
the number-one car brand on social
media (100m followers, including
26m on Instagram alone).
Ask Seeger whether she thinks
all this is actually going to sell any
more cars and she looks at you like
the simple, living-in-the-past fool
you clearly are. The future, you see,
is about selling mobility, not cars.
“There has never, ever been
a more challenging time to be
working in this industry, certainlynot in my 28 years at Mercedes.
I don’t think even in 130 years,
except maybe our founding fathers,
with the shift from the horse and
carriage, faced change on the scale
that we are now,” she enthuses.
“But if you consider change as
something positive, not to fear,
then these are very interesting
times. I’m not afraid, and my job is
to unlock the pioneering spirit in
my people, because we are entering
uncharted waters.
“You have to adapt, quickly. The
product will still be essential, and
the design, the desire for our cars,
but the change will be, how do you
have these cars?
“Today, buying or leasing is very
common but having and owning
a car will change, and tomorrow
it could be a flat rate, or sharing.
Some people are now ready to pay
a monthly fee, like a mobile phone.
“I’m sure retail will play a role,
but the digital experience will
dramatically increase.“What people want above all
is convenience, and the most
successful businesses today – like
Amazon – are those that can save
people time.”
Reading that, if you’re a
Mercedes-Benz dealer, you might
want to have a close look at what
happened to the German soccer
team’s sponsorship dollars.
So, Seeger believes car ownership
is changing, and that many of those
eSports-loving youngsters will never
actually own one, the way we do
now. But she also believes that
some things will stay the same;
backing both petrol and diesel
engines to be the dominant motiveforces for some time, even as Benz
invests frantically in EVs, launching
10 of them between now and 2022
(she’s a big fan of plug-in hybrids).
Fortunately, she also predicts that
what people are now calling “legacy
vehicles” – cars driven by humans- will be with us forever, and that
Benz will keep making them.
“I truly believe you will still have
people who want to drive their
cars in the future, and we will offer
that,” Seeger says.
“We are still at a crossroads;
we have cars that can drive fully
autonomously, but will they have
a steering wheel that you can
grab and take over? This is still
in discussion.
“But I do not believe that
everyone will go in the autonomous
direction, just as I don’t believe that
everyone will go for car-sharing.
But people will want these mobility
choices, so we have to be ready to
offer all of these options.”
STEPHEN CORBY
She was the one who made the call to end the company’s
decades-long sponsorship of German football
The future will favour the brave, says this Mercedes exec
3M has announced an additive for its sheet
moulded composites that will help car
manufacturers shave weight from plastics while
retaining strength. ‘Glass Bubbles S32HS’ is a
development from established technology used
in sealants and injection moulded parts that
has now been translated to vehicle applications.
Promising a 40 percent reduction in weight, the
technology aims to pare back the average 300kg
weight of composites in cars and can be used on
Class A paintable surfaces like body panels as
well as cabin plastics and light reflectors.BUBBLE ECONOMY