Q&A with Jochen Sengpiehl, VP Marketing, Hyundai Motor Europe
How do you expect digital technologies to transform the automotive industry?
In the automotive industry, sales, service, mobility and connected in-car technology need to be integrated to create a seamless customer brand experience. Carmakers need to eliminate silo structures and overcome traditional organizational boundaries. The goal must be to put the customer at the center and not the product.
This is a totally new approach and a new thinking for the industry and at Hyundai, we have identified five key trends: the first is a “product-service hybrid”, the fusion of a car and a service, for example car sharing. The second trend is what we call the car as a living hub: the rise of autonomous driving means people will not just be driving a car but living parts of their lives in them.
We are constantly working on new communication, information and entertainment opportunities in and around our cars. The third and fourth trends are customized mobility and what we call neo mobility. This means that applications in the car will be increasingly integrated into daily life and work; for example, controlling your home appliances from the car. We are working intensely on the integration of this infrastructure. The last one is the mobility-energy grid. It’s the holistic approach of energy use for mobility as well as for households.
What opportunities do these trends offer Hyundai?
Accessible, affordable and aspirational technology is our future. Hyundai has become very strong in Europe in the last 20 years. We have almost doubled our sales in the past nine years by being a budget brand. We now want Hyundai to be perceived as the technology brand we have become, that is accessible for everyone.
We are a first mover in electrification and autonomous driving. For example, the IONIQ is the world’s first car to offer hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric powertrains in a single body type. We are convinced: by shifting the brand to a more aspirational and technology-driven level we can attract more and new customers.
“Carmakers need to eliminate silo structures and overcome traditional
organizational boundaries. The customer must be in the center, not the
product.” Jochen Sengpiehl, VP Marketing, Hyundai Motor Europe
How are you using digital marketing to develop the Hyundai brand?
New digital marketing tools are helping to boost the efficiency of our budget spends and the impact of our campaigns. Therefore we have launched our own newsroom and restructured our European marketing team to include digital and PR. For the launch of our new IONIQ family we shifted away from conventional product-oriented ads, following an entirely digital approach around a brand film designed to appeal to a younger, environmentally-conscious generation.
We firmly believe that we can reach this important target group effectively with data-driven digital story-telling. Furthermore we created a digital IONIQ hub, including a 3D app with augmented reality content to showcase the car’s technologies and inform customers about our solutions.
What was the impact of the IONIQ hub on sales?
It has been a major success. The average conversion rate for visitors on the IONIQ hub was 4%. Industry average is below 1%. In some markets, our conversion rate was close to 10%
