s sana in corpore sano - it's been a great awakening, a scary awakening but now I'm in a good place.
With a corporate job and globe trotting, moving international, living life as we would have dreamt of at INSEAD, you also need to have certain discipline which I did not have. When I just moved to Bangkok in 2019, I was basically living between Paris and Bangkok for close to eight months and then traveling in different geographies. This took a toll where I was living out of a suitcase for eight months, eating, drinking whatever I could get, sleeping whenever I could, working my ass off. I think it reached a point where my body at a certain point said “Okay, enough”. That evening I got to sleep, I woke up in the middle of the night, I can't get out of bed, I can't move. That scared the hell out of me and forced me to do something.
20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
Professionally, I'm still on the journey to find exactly what I want to do.
I've been automotive throughout, 2 big groups, 4 different brands, Fiat, Alpha Romeo, Maserati and now in Nisan.
On the personal side, beautiful family, two kids, 5 cities, close to 11 apartments and potentially contemplating a new one.
I might be the most healthy over the last fifteen years at this point in time
Would have been nice If somebody had told me how much patience you need to work in Asia before I started the role here.
ON TOPIC: Data driven marketing, dynamic creative in automotive
When it comes to cars, [buying one] is the most irrational thing a person can do. You work your ass off to make some money and then the day you say “Okay, I want this car”, you sign a check, the day you sign the check it's not even dry, 30% of the value is gone, it's the only asset that depreciates.
We’re talking about [a purchase] in tens to hundred plus thousands of euros per car, so the minimum you would expect is to have a great customer journey, but it's shite.
Data driven marking - in automotive we were lagging compared to the rest of industries, especially when it comes to cars. It's a huge ticket item in terms of spend, people leave a lot of data points. We spend billions on creating the website and the only thing we do is use that as a showcase.
ON TOPIC: The Automotive industry, disruption, data driven marketing, Tesla, electric vehicles, Formula 1 and more
86 million people buy a new car every year.
Automotive is at a crossroad, a lot of changes happening, but what you will generally hear is, for some time we've be talking about this is the CASE - which is Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric.
The main thing now is the growth of China. This year is the first year when China is forecasted to overtake Japan in terms of CBU exports and most of that is electric.
Europe is moving to electrified and the Chinese are coming in at a different price point, so there could be big changes in the brands that we see on European roads in a short space of time.
Is Germany in trouble? Yeah, I don't know if it's in trouble or not, it's too hard to say but the domestic China sales used to be a big driver for all the brands in Germany. Domestic China sales are taking a toll, because the Chinese are really coming up, especially with electric.
What [Tesla] did good was throwing away all conventional ways of looking at things. It potentially could be 1 of the most vertically integrated companies, so it's much easier for them to grab the better, the bigger part of profit, or manage the cost.
All THINGS INSEAD AND GIVING BACK
INSEAD has been the first point of contact in any country I've tried to have landed at.