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EP 7: Greg Clark – Experience at Mercedes-Benz, Honda and Jaguar Land Rover prepared him for launching the INEOS Grenadier in the Americas
45 Plays11 days ago
The Auto Ethnographer is joined by Greg Clark who expounds on his experiences working with Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, American Honda, and INEOS Automotive. Four distinctly different brands, each with its own culture. During the conversation we "visit" the UK, Germany, Japan, and United States and the unique working cultures of each.
Greg, a native of the United Kingdom, moved to the United States for his studies. He parlayed that stay into the beginnings of an automotive career with Mercedes-Benz and Honda in the US. He worked in product management at both companies but each functioned much differently on the same topic.
After expanding the Mercedes-AMG centers in the US, he took over the overall AMG brand in the United States. Following successful growth of the brand and its sales, he transferred to Mercedes-AMG headquarters in Affalterbach, Germany. It took some time to sort out how to work with the German culture but Greg persevered.
He then transitioned to Jaguar Land Rover to lead an engineering department. This was a major shift in culture, company, and corporate function. He then slid over into JLR Brand Management and steered marketing over markets in the Overseas Region.
These experiences culminated in a preparedness a new challenge. He launched the INEOS Grenadier in the Americas as he took over as head of the region. This vehicle was born of English roots, German engineering, and French-based manufacturing. His task was to successfully introduce it to the United States and other markets in the Americas.
Greg introspectively discusses the challenges at each company and with each national culture that he encountered. He highlights some of the pitfalls that leaders can avoid due to cultural differences in the workplace.
To learn more about The Auto Ethnographer please visit the homepage at https://www.auto-ethnographer.com
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Transcript
Introduction to British Culture and Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
The British culture, I thought was a really nice blend of the pragmatism of the US and the structure and discipline of Germany.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Auto Ethnographer. I'm John Steck, your host on this journey. We travel the globe to bring you stories about culture and the global automotive industry. Fasten your seatbelt and let's get started.
Greg Clark's Career Beginnings
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Autoethnographer. This week we have an exciting guest, Greg Clark, a previous executive, the head of the Americas for the new classic 4x4 off-roader brand Ineo, where he helped launch the Grenadier in the US market and in the rest of the Americas.
00:00:48
Speaker
He spent time with Jaguar Land Rover as a brand director prior to that, responsible for the overseas region where he had responsibility responsibilities for many countries except the UK, ironically, given that he's British in his background.
00:01:06
Speaker
He also worked for Mercedes-Benz in the global headquarters as well as in the United States, primarily in product management roles. as well as supporting the AMG brand in the US as they were working on their network development strategy.
00:01:20
Speaker
Over in Germany, he spent time with Mercedes AMG as the director of communications, branding and events, where he had the opportunity to work in a local German environment, as well as with many markets around the world.
00:01:35
Speaker
With that, I'd like to introduce Greg Clark. Greg, welcome to the Autoethnographer. John, thanks very much. Thanks for having me. It's exciting to be here.
Mercedes-Benz Experience and Cultural Adaptation
00:01:44
Speaker
You first came over to the U.S. to study, actually, and you had the opportunity to to study in the United States. And from there, you launched that almost directly into an an automotive career with with Mercedes-Benz in the United States.
00:01:59
Speaker
Maybe take back in time a little bit and and let's talk about that. and And how was it as a relatively young British not exchange student, but foreign student ah coming to the U.S. and then suddenly launching yourself into the automotive industry in the U.S. That was, um my goodness, going back to 97, 98. I'm dating myself here, but ah you the the origins for that, I think, were but far before that time. I was raised on American TV.
00:02:29
Speaker
I mean, for a kid from the countryside in in Britain, I mean, America was where everything was happening. So, yeah. The opportunity to to, as part of my my study path, my program, just to be able to go and spend some time in the U.S. was a no-brainer.
00:02:44
Speaker
But then had the opportunity to study and to live, um actually in a place which is ah very, quite I would say, unusual. i went to New Mexico.
00:02:54
Speaker
As you know, John, you the the cultural differences in different places of the United States, it is it's 10 countries in one, um if not more. And in many cases, it's very much the dis-United States.
00:03:07
Speaker
um So, but we won't go into that because that's more a political conversation. But ah yeah know through that process, I had the really good fortune to to secure an internship with Mercedes-Benz who were were based in and New Jersey at that time.
00:03:22
Speaker
And kind of another cliche, i loved anything with wheels. As a kid, two wheels, three wheels, four wheels, more. you couldn't keep me away from it. There was something about motion and movement that I really, really loved.
00:03:36
Speaker
And the opportunity to work for Mercedes-Benz at that particular moment in time was was, again, just very, very fortuitous. And I was very privileged to be able to to to start my automotive career there in 99.
00:03:49
Speaker
So was that your your first exposure to the German culture? Because even though Mercedes-Benz USA was was focused on the U.S. market, clearly there's there's a German influence as well on how they work and how how they have to submit things back to the headquarters. And of course, there are also German expats working in in New Jersey at that time Mercedes-Benz.
00:04:14
Speaker
How was that in terms of adaptation? It was very... Educational, as as many things throughout my career have been. and And ironically, having grown up in England, I had never visited Germany.
00:04:26
Speaker
I've been to France and Spain and Switzerland. For whatever reason, I've just never been to Germany. But yet here I was working for a German company many thousands of miles away in in New Jersey and interacting with German people. And I didn't have a German boss when I when i started. But certainly the the head of the department, the division, was a German expat.
00:04:47
Speaker
And so, yeah, that was educational. But if you I had very little work experience at that time. So you don't know what you don't know. And I was just soaking up as much as I possibly could.
00:04:59
Speaker
And I found that the U.S. culture, the U.S. s culture of Mercedes-Benz USA in New Jersey at that time was so compatible with the way that I with me, I suppose, the way that I liked to do things.
00:05:13
Speaker
um I was able to really work around vehicles that were a dream. Um, we'd never had the ability or the means to be able to purchase a Mercedes or be around Mercedes when I was a kid. Um, so suddenly, know, working in a building surrounded by all these really interesting people looking out of the windows on a parking lot full of these Mercedes was, was in heaven. mean, what was not to like? And this, a New York city was, was just, a you know, 45 away.
00:05:40
Speaker
forty five minutes away So, um, Yeah, I was extremely fortuitous. That in itself is is its own microenvironment or microcosm but between the the American culture and the and the German culture. they They found a way to to work together over a period of decades, right?
00:05:58
Speaker
I just was going to mention, I found that certainly the Northeast was the, I found this since living here a long time and living in different places and traveling extensively, that the Northeast is the most European cosmopolitan probably of all of the areas of the United States are found. So, i mean, that much made the compatibility or made that that transition for me a little bit easier.
00:06:25
Speaker
There was still this element of, hey, we do it we do it our way here. And there was this cultural tension between ah very regimented, um very structured German approach and a more casual,
00:06:40
Speaker
um more relationship-based, more fluid American approach. And they did find a way to be able to make that work and and to to make sure that that was successful over the period of time because America was just such a large and profitable market.
00:06:57
Speaker
So there was there was the motivation to make it work. And also for the German expats, that area of the world was a pretty cool place to spend three years or five years, however long they were on their rotation for.
00:07:08
Speaker
as I remember the sales volumes of Mercedes-Benz, roughly the time that you were there ah was when the U.S. market actually surpassed the German market as being the number one Mercedes-Benz market in the world.
00:07:21
Speaker
of Of course, that's no longer the case now where basically China is is far larger than either of the two. And I think that that does change the dynamic between the two organizations, the two countries. And that dynamic, I think, is is fluid again and is changing over the course of time as the Chinese market becomes ultra competitive and softens and the Chinese brands gain more and more market share.
00:07:45
Speaker
But some anyway, but nevertheless, the the the culture for me, that, um you know, very roll up your sleeves, let's get things done, let's work together with the structure of the German approach.
00:08:01
Speaker
You know, for me, that was that was the foundation of my entire career. And it's something that I have been able to employ over you know the proceeding or the intervening 25 years, but hasn't always worked.
00:08:14
Speaker
ah you know and And I've had to be very introspective, I think, and and quite self-reflective about my biases and the things that I picked up in the early stages of our career and anybody's career, you kind of get formed in within a certain mold and you have to be very conscious of of adapting and making that mold malleable over the course of time. And and That's been a really interesting part of of my job and and particularly as I've gone through different careers and living in different countries and working with very different teams.
00:08:43
Speaker
When you actually move from your home country into other countries and work among other other cultures, it it puts up this mirror that you can look into and you, and it reflects back on you on what is your original culture and the bias that's attached to that.
00:09:02
Speaker
and And you start to look at the world in a completely different way. you You realize that there are other perspectives that you can take than, you know, what what you basically grew up with. <unk> I found the same, but when I was, when I was younger.
00:09:14
Speaker
I think that's really important because then when you are in a different environment, Number one, I think you have a very firm appreciation of the environment you came from. um And there's a silly expression, there is none. So there's nobody so English as an Englishman who no longer lives in England.
00:09:30
Speaker
But you see yourself through other people's eyes based on their reactions and the way that they interact with you. And that forces you to reflect on, well, okay, this is the way that we do things. and But they don't do things like this i over here. And if I go somewhere else, they do things
Transition to Honda and Cultural Differences
00:09:46
Speaker
very differently as well. So...
00:09:48
Speaker
Travel for me, the ability to experience different cultures, whether it be corporate cultures or societies, it's just been the biggest privilege and hopefully will continue to be the privilege biggest privilege of of my life and and now my family and um understanding just how wonderfully different, but also how common we are, how you know how similar we all are, is it's just been a joy.
00:10:15
Speaker
um And I think it has allowed me to much better adapt to interrelate and and to motivate different teams as I've progressed through my career, because I've needed less and less time to be able to pick up on what, on the dynamic of the team, what motivates a team, whether that team be in India or in China or here in America or um goodness knows that we' certainly the Europeans, um all of which all of whom ah yeah operate very differently. So I don't profess to be an expert, but I've been fortunate to have a number of experiences that have allowed me to become more proficient at doing that.
00:10:58
Speaker
So speaking of that privilege of of working with different cultures, you you took an unexpected turn fairly early in your career and you worked for briefly for a Japanese automotive manufacturer.
00:11:11
Speaker
Can you talk us to us a little bit about that? Because that's really a sudden change from the German culture to a Japanese automaker. Yes. 2006, 2007, I worked for Honda, um American Honda as they're known, in Torrance, California. So I moved from coast to coast. I left Mercedes-Benz.
00:11:33
Speaker
where I was working and really enjoying my role in in product management, working for and just an amazing boss at the time and a great group of, ah group a great team. um I won't go too much into it. There was a girl involved, a lovely lady. And so there was some you know other sort of personal motivation to to make that move.
00:11:53
Speaker
But so it wasn't just a corporate move. I was fortunate enough to get a role with Honda, you know moving into a Japanese culture which was fascinating. it was so It was so different from the german approach the German-American approach, I would say, from Mercedes-Benz, whereby there were very so powerful, charismatic leaders that made ah decisions and motivated people, whether they are you know American or or German, to a a culture that was extraordinarily committee-based.
00:12:31
Speaker
and um group decision making, very, very clear hierarchy, but a much more subtle and nuanced way of influencing a corporation and interacting with with teams.
00:12:45
Speaker
Again, this was sort of Japanese American, but what I found is that the the the Japanese expats, the implants had a different role. Their role within the the Honda organization was very much to to monitor, to steer, to influence and and and really very subtly to govern the organization.
00:13:08
Speaker
um So I found that the Americanization, and I'm speaking specifically about Honda now because I believe the Toyota experience is quite different. And Toyota was effectively our neighbor at the time because they had not yet moved to Texas.
00:13:22
Speaker
um So, you know, I found that that was a much, there was a much greater Japanese influence there. So that was an adaptation for me personally in terms of as a product manager. I was working with the Acura brand at the time.
00:13:37
Speaker
As a product manager, how is it that I now do the job ah of a product manager effectively, steer the two products that I was responsible for, which was the RL and the TL, which the TL was by far the volume leader um and the RL was the the the top of the line Acura at the time.
00:13:58
Speaker
How is it that I feel that I can bring some of the experience from Mercedes and my product knowledge and and influence this brand? Because I would do it in a very different way. Very, very data based.
00:14:11
Speaker
um Lots of data, lots of empirical data, lots of evidence, lots of market research that's done, which I really appreciated. There was a lot of listening, a lot of research contrasted to more opinions.
00:14:26
Speaker
and expertise and experience that I found in Mercedes-Benz. And so for the limited time that I was there in in and that organization, I found that, again, I had the opportunity and and the privilege to learn. It wasn't always easy. it was actually quite frustrating for me in many ways because I knew what needed to be done. And I just felt that my goodness, this is extraordinarily slow in getting there.
00:14:54
Speaker
But it imparted upon me the the value of making sure that you were adequately researching and collecting enough data about the decisions that you were gonna be able to present and then make um that perhaps had been a little bit light at Mercedes-Benz.
00:15:11
Speaker
And and i've I've remembered that and I valued that to to this day to find a balance between doing your homework, making sure that you you understand the marketplace, your customer, your competitors,
00:15:24
Speaker
in a very clear way before making a move. Now, I felt that that was the protracted process was too protracted at Honda, and that there is a very there is a happy medium in my mind between a more sort of impulsive decision-making process that I may have found at Mercedes and a sort of more protracted committee-based experience at Honda.
00:15:51
Speaker
but Very interesting to to basically dip into a much more nuanced culture where a lot of times the message is not the words themselves, but the silence in between the words.
00:16:03
Speaker
John, i I'll give you one example. And it's one that I remember fondly um because it needed some translation at the time. And I remember the, ah the,
00:16:16
Speaker
ah I was part part of product management and there was an expat assigned to product and to product strategy. And this guy I remember very well because he was very strategic.
00:16:27
Speaker
He was extremely difficult to read from my perspective because as you know, having experienced and and worked with Japanese people that um everything is extremely nuanced and is is very calm, certainly to the outside. And I had proposed something that I thought was was brilliant.
00:16:47
Speaker
I thought it was logical and that we we absolutely should do this. and And I'd spent time and I i could see there was a little resistance. So changed tack and I i ah presented in a different way and I brought more data and I said, well, look at what the competitor is doing. This is what we need to be doing.
00:17:05
Speaker
and um And I remember the response. It was very respectful. And he said, Clarkson, please reconsider. and
00:17:17
Speaker
At the time, I thought, I don't need to reconsider. I've done all the research. This is what we we need to do. and and And a colleague who was much more experienced and and i am smarter than I probably took me aside and and explained to me what that meant. And effectively, without saying, Greg, that's the dumbest idea i've ever heard, he he was very polite to say, yeah we would like you, because they never said no.
00:17:42
Speaker
no, we're not going to do that. It's always a much more polite and deflective way of of of rejection. um And being able to read those nuances and respond to them thereafter was was, I think, quite helpful. Otherwise, I would have been such a thorn in their side that they would have just thrown me out probably.
Return to Mercedes and AMG Development
00:18:02
Speaker
After your experience with Honda, You went back to the mothership. You went back to Mercedes-Benz. I was c incredibly, again, fortunate. I know I'm using that word a lot, but I do i feel an immense amount of gratitude to people that I was able to develop good relationships with that um I felt, well, respected a great deal and that had advocated for for me to to come back and take a role that was relatively uncharted.
00:18:34
Speaker
And that particular role was um on expanding and developing the dealer network, particularly for AMG, to establish a sort of a network within a network of AMG performance centers, as they were called.
00:18:49
Speaker
And this was working very intensively, as you can imagine, with AMG. my My interaction previously, and I know you had Helen McBurson on your podcast you know a couple of weeks back,
00:19:01
Speaker
And I had the ability and the luxury of working with people like Helmut and his team in product management. um But that was that was Mercedes headquarters. This was AMG.
00:19:13
Speaker
and And what I learned over the course of time that Affalterbach, where AMG is is based, is is kind of a satellite operation that was primarily engineering that had grown up very, very separately to Mercedes-Benz and was was acquired over over the course of time.
00:19:30
Speaker
And so developed a culture which was very different. And I think they really relished being the Mavericks being be really quite different. But when it comes to the regional level at Mercedes-Benz USA or Mercedes-Benz Germany or Mercedes-Benz UK, wherever it may be, you know all of these things have to converge in a sales and distribution network. They have to work ultimately for the dealer and they have to be logical for the customer.
00:19:58
Speaker
So I had really a couple of roles. Number one was the functional side of things, which was, well, all right, you know how are we going to do this and establish these kind of AMG super centers across the US?
00:20:09
Speaker
um The other side of it was almost playing playing diplomat, playing liaison and go-between, between ah the the mothership, as you described it, which is the core of the operations.
00:20:21
Speaker
That is what that's what's really, really important. That's what keeps the company running and and is 99% of the organization. This part of the organization that I was trying to represent and make inroads for was incredibly exciting.
00:20:39
Speaker
The high performance division of Mercedes-Benz, the most expensive, largely the most expensive vehicles, the most powerful, the most sort of audacious of all of the vehicles.
00:20:51
Speaker
and And it was something that gradually over that course of time, in that particular period of time, That was um more and more attractive, I think, to the mothership as they realized that their image was becoming older.
00:21:06
Speaker
Helmut talked about this in your podcast. of kind of even yeah His experience back in late 80s and into the 90s was a brand that was for maybe a grandfather or somebody who was older and very successful. it wasn't for a younger person.
00:21:20
Speaker
And so trying to sort of blend that using the the the tailwind of of Mercedes pulling AMG into the fold and playing diplomat to say, well, how do we do this in a way that doesn't upset the apple cart, that makes sure that we are it sort of maintaining the integrity of Mercedes-Benz and we're not contradicting any of the activities or initiatives or or momentum of Mercedes, but um is enhancing, complementing, and and just adding to the Mercedes-Benz business with with AMG.
00:21:58
Speaker
And, you know i was heard, it's not not a phrase that I invented, but a guy that I worked for at the time said that the best way that we can describe it is that AMG helps polish the star. It makes it shiny.
00:22:09
Speaker
It makes it more attractive. and And I thought that was a very good way to put it, um to try and make sure that we were eliminating any of that internal conflict and and an obstacle that that could have prevented what I thought was a really quite positive project. So that transition back was was interesting to get back to the Northeast.
00:22:30
Speaker
It was very interesting from a functional perspective, but it was sort of doubly interesting because i then was exposed to a Falterbach and an AMG where you had to sort of make these two things coexist.
00:22:45
Speaker
And you were ultimately then drawn in into really truly the orbit of AMG. The thing that I was balancing at the time is, yes, I was getting more and more involved closer and closer to AMG.
00:22:58
Speaker
I went from leading the AMG Performance Center program to then actually managing the the sub-brand. It was managing Mercedes AMG and also Maybach and and McLaren SLR at the time.
00:23:14
Speaker
But AMG was the the biggest of the three, was the most interesting of the three. And if one of the most common things that you hear from customers and dealers who go and visit AMG headquarters is we never expected it to be here because it's out in farmland and apple orchards outside 35 minutes outside of Stuttgart, a long way away from these sort of very large office and manufacturing complexes that are Mercedes.
00:23:46
Speaker
And but what they find there is is just is quite remarkable um from a from an operational perspective, because all of the engines are hand built there. They have the one man or one person, one engine.
00:23:59
Speaker
ah principle where they are just hand built. Every one of the um the the eight cylinders, the 12 cylinders is hand built there, which is phenomenal to see. But they say, well, I never imagined that we'd have to go out into the farmland to be able to find this this place.
00:24:14
Speaker
That separation um was effectively, it could have been 35 minutes, it could have been three days, because in many ways, that connectivity, that connective tissue was quite tenuous in places.
00:24:30
Speaker
And at Mercedes at the time, the largest market for AMG, there was an awful lot of focus on us. There was a lot of popularity, a lot of success in in the US market.
00:24:41
Speaker
I had moved from, in parallel, i'd I'd moved to managing the brand, but also managing peers. So I'd gone from peer to manager, which was a really interesting experience. and it's difficult, I think, can be challenging for anybody who does it,
00:25:00
Speaker
but But particularly, I found because of the US culture, it's a much more casual, much more informal relationship between manager and peer than in many ways, if you have the right team works exceptionally well.
00:25:14
Speaker
If you have the wrong team, I think it can work very poorly because that construct of of hierarchy he doesn't exist as clearly in the US as it does in Germany, for example.
00:25:27
Speaker
So when I transitioned to Germany, I kind of ah kind of imported this more casual, informal process of managing a team to the first job that I took at AMG.
00:25:42
Speaker
And I failed. I fell on my face. The first six months sucked because I just, I did i did most stuff wrong.
00:25:55
Speaker
And, and i you know, I look back at that time and I tell people about that time, you know, quite frequently because what i what I did is something that was completely unexpected and actually completely inappropriate to the German working culture and maybe particularly the Mercedes-Benz working culture, um whereby i i didn't respect the very formalized relationship between manager and team.
00:26:22
Speaker
I didn't implement the structure that was expected that makes ah that dynamic work, that culture work, that team work. And it took me quite a long time to sort of figure out what I was doing wrong.
00:26:40
Speaker
And in the meantime, there's some collateral damage of that because you you know you are the American who comes over from this hot shop market, who is supposed to come over and inject this sort of internationalism and and and maybe these new ideas and this new energy into the organization.
00:26:56
Speaker
and And I think it was probably a huge disappointment but for many many of the people until I kind of worked out, well, I'm doing this wrong. I did bring experience directly with customers, directly with dealers.
00:27:13
Speaker
How do we actually get traction on the ground by the decisions that we're making commercially um up at the very, you know, close to the top of the value chain when you're looking at product strategy, product development, marketing,
00:27:27
Speaker
what is going to move the needle down low? What is going to be palatable to both the regional headquarters, the sales and distribution team, but also dealers? um So that was, i think, really quite valuable perspective and expertise.
Challenges in Chinese Market and Return to UK
00:27:43
Speaker
um The one other thing I'll say about that time, because I really feel like it was a very compressed experience period of change, not just for me, but for the organization, because China was growing so incredibly rapidly at this time.
00:27:58
Speaker
um and And China kind of threw a big wrench into the works because you now have a market and a customer who is very unlike the customer that you've known for the last decades.
00:28:13
Speaker
It has been quite a traditional customer regardless of the market that that Mercedes has participated in, with some exceptions. This was a status symbol. This was something that you achieved and you were able to purchase as you've progressed through your career or through your life.
00:28:29
Speaker
um And you've reached a certain age. The in the average age of Mercedes customer was maybe 52. fifty two Maybe it crept down to the late 40s, but maybe it was older than that if you look at some segments.
00:28:41
Speaker
All of a sudden, the Chinese market comes into play and grows massively as economically they strengthen. And suddenly you've got a customer you don't recognize. And it's nothing to do with physically you don't recognize them. You don't recognize the demographics. You don't recognize the level of ah wealth and the motivations, the psychographics behind this.
00:29:00
Speaker
um Of a customer, they're in their 30s. And in many cases, they're in their twenty s And they are responding to things, they are looking for things, they're looking for marketing and and image and identity and and things that are very appealing to them that are very, very different to the German customer.
00:29:21
Speaker
They're very different to the American customer customer in many ways. And so in that period of time, you're also launching vehicles that are designed to appeal to younger customers.
00:29:34
Speaker
the A-Class, the CLA, the MFA platform, as it was known at the time, these are entry-level products. But you have ah products there that are designed to appeal to maybe 30-year-olds, but you've got the 30-year-olds in China who are buying the SLs and the Maybachs and the S-Classes and the you know the the the top stuff. that So from a myocardial perspective, this provided quite a boggle, quite a conundrum as to How is it that you take a limited marketing budget and a um you know a product strategy and you make that stretch, you make it malleable enough that it can stretch across a Chinese market with that particular customer and a much more established traditional market like Germany or the United States.
00:30:19
Speaker
So, you know, all of these things that, you know, i found fascinating ah and at the time and and some things we did well, and you know, I sort of gradually got into it and some things I felt completely on my face
00:30:33
Speaker
But I'll tell you maybe another reason another example, um which which was, again, you know, I learn more.
00:30:45
Speaker
i've probably always learn more from the failings in my career, the things that I've royally screwed up, um than I do from those things that I think actually that went pretty well. You know, that worked as planned.
00:30:57
Speaker
i think we I think that's the same for for everybody. you You learn from the mistakes as the saying goes. ah Well, yeah I hope so. I've certainly met people that don't um and seem to do the same thing again in a kit and And I've certainly met people that probably don't spend as much time being introspective as to like, hey, I could have done that better because they have a certain opinion of themselves or a certain arrogance that says, yeah, this is all great. This is all great. What are you talking about? That was never a failure.
00:31:26
Speaker
um There was a it was a particular brand campaign that was but specifically for AMG, and it was a big investment um that I worked on together with my team who were you know really young and and ambitious, really smart, very intelligent, clever people.
00:31:46
Speaker
And the it was clear the opportunity was in China. The United States was no longer, it you know even if it it was, it was no longer going to be the biggest market in the world.
00:31:59
Speaker
The market is going to be China. And that is the market that ultimately did grow to such a size where it eclipsed the United States by some margin. The customer, as I've mentioned, is very different.
00:32:09
Speaker
They're younger. They respond to different things. They're more emotional. They're more visual. They're less about motorsports, which just didn't exist in in China. They have no comprehension of motorsports.
00:32:22
Speaker
the real appreciation of some of the, ah whether it's Formula One or ah DTM or some of the successes that Mercedes and AMG have had in that arena. um So you very much needed to appeal to them on a different basis. they You needed to connect with them on a different basis.
00:32:40
Speaker
And with this brand campaign, we we pushed it way too far. I pushed it or allowed the team and myself and the agency to push it way too far. into something that when, when presented to the leadership of the company, I won't name names at the time, that the CEO,
00:32:56
Speaker
um
00:32:59
Speaker
you could, you could certainly, you could, you could understand the disdain for what we had created. created And that was nowhere connected to the the very sort of deeply entrenched roots of the organization and the,
00:33:16
Speaker
the USPs that had been the USPs up until that point in time. Very mechanical, very engineering based, very motorsport based. um And again, you go round and round and say that the Chinese customer, our biggest market doesn't really respond to these things. That's not what we need to to communicate.
00:33:36
Speaker
It was clear that I was not gonna win that one. I was wrong. And ultimately, you know it meant that um it was clear I was gonna have a bit of a change coming in my career.
Role at Jaguar Land Rover and Brand Management
00:33:45
Speaker
um And at the time it just so happens that um I had the the urge to go back home to the UK.
00:33:54
Speaker
and And that's the time when I jumped out and I went back home because because my parents were getting older. I'd spent so much time away and the opportunity came up with January. but Ironically, you know, you're You mentioned earlier that you said a a Brit is most British when he's not in Britain, I believe, something like this.
00:34:15
Speaker
So now you're going home, and for and for the first time, you're actually going to work in the UK. Yeah, again, for a company that was, again, quite different. At at that time, 2014, joined I'd done –
00:34:31
Speaker
and and i'd done I'd really thought about my career and and what I was going to do. And at various points in my career, I've thought about jumping out of automotive and going into a new industry, learning something different.
00:34:43
Speaker
And each time I just haven't been able to make that jump because i think my heart hasn't been in it. um I've i' loved the business for all of its failings, but it is so nuanced. It's so complicated. It's one of the most highly regulated, highly competitive, capital intensive,
00:35:01
Speaker
um interesting emotional industries that um for me, that I think you can work in. um And I did consider you know jumping out, but then realized my heart's not in it.
00:35:14
Speaker
So what I actually need to do is i need to learn about different parts of the value chain. I want to learn about different parts of the automotive business that I have not lived in.
00:35:26
Speaker
And I've worked extensively with engineering and with research and development and with product development. but I'd never actually worked in engineering um or manufacturing. So I looked for opportunities and quite intentionally steered myself into that upstream part of the value chain, into where the first product concepts are developed, into where that is then engineered and ultimately is manufactured before it's passed over to the commercial organization to market and sell and and distribute.
00:36:00
Speaker
And so when I joined January and I drove up, I took over a team of engineers um and program management. And this was part of an initiative at that time to expand and and to to really invest in what they call the personalization side of the business.
00:36:19
Speaker
And that was anything from the most basic accessories all the way up to the most expensive one-off bespoke creations. for typically Range Rover at the time.
00:36:33
Speaker
And so, i mean, not only do I have a new company culture, it's a more British way of doing things, which um I'll talk about in a minute, which I think is kind of a happy medium between the German way of doing things and the US way of doing things in in my mind.
00:36:48
Speaker
um so So there was a that was loosely an Indian culture involved because Tata was ah the owner, still is the owner of of Jaguar Range Rover. And there was the culture within the organization, um because now you're working on the engineering and manufacturing side, which is very different than the commercial side of the business.
00:37:08
Speaker
The British culture, I thought, was a really nice blend of the pragmatism of the US and the structure and discipline of Germany.
00:37:23
Speaker
um The negative side of that, and again, this is me, I'm only the sort of social scientist or anything like that. The negative side of that, I think, is that the the Brits have a habit of triangulation. And triangulation is when everybody is participating in a meeting or a decision or a discussion.
00:37:41
Speaker
And then parties leave that discussion or their meeting and then they talk about what's happened and they are, well, going to do that. I think that's nonsense. Or they come out with with with their own particular interpretation about what the the plan is.
00:37:57
Speaker
In Germany, there is no such discussion. In Germany, there is no such confusion because there is discipline, there's structure, there's more often than not, there are minutes, there are action points, and you go off and you and you do it.
00:38:09
Speaker
you know Even if people have dissenting opinions, you go off and you do it. um Not the case in in the UK, which I found. um and And again, you i've been a brit yeah being a Brit didn't necessarily give me the playbook to to be a Brit in a corporate culture.
00:38:28
Speaker
I wasn't sort of blessed with that innate ability just to be able to navigate that. That four years was was particularly instructive for me and the cultural side of how things get done in in engineering and manufacturing with very specific milestones, with very specific objectives. And and also, um i'm trying to think of the best way to describe this within the engineering environment.
00:38:55
Speaker
There is a different way of communicating with a team of engineers, a different way of managing and motivating a team team of engineers than there would be a team of marketers. Very different. Left brain, right brain.
00:39:07
Speaker
Like you said, du you have the the very strong left brain there. And then you jumped over to the right brain side, at also at Jaguar Land Rover, right? You went over into brand, into into marketing, which couldn't possibly be more different than the engineering community.
00:39:24
Speaker
Yes, you're you're absolutely right. and And for my sins, I probably got back into marketing. Marketing is one of the most, the least thankful, the most thankless jobs in the world you can possibly have because everybody has an opinion.
00:39:37
Speaker
Everybody's an expert and everybody's going to take shots at whatever you've created. So I think you've got to have a quite a thick skin as as a marketer. um But I definitely pulled upon my experience of working at AMG.
00:39:54
Speaker
um because I wasn't just working in a bubble with El Falterback. We were working extensively with the Chinese market, extensively with the top 20 markets around the world for the AMG brand.
00:40:06
Speaker
and So that was my first exposure ah to Middle Eastern markets, Russian markets, um South American ah markets that were um incredibly, ah but Australia, that were incredibly high potential.
00:40:24
Speaker
And so that was the experience that I had at AMG and was able to travel and and and really learn a lot and collaborate a lot with these markets. And I was able to pull on that again when I i took over the responsibility for the overseas region.
00:40:38
Speaker
And that really, I think, allowed me to put a blend of of ah abilities, whether they market whether they're marketing, their product or customer focus altogether and focus on um two brands at that time.
00:40:56
Speaker
You could argue there are three brands, Range Rover, Land Rover, and Jaguar, but Land Rover and Range Rover are one, the Land Rover brand. And really look at where the opportunity and potential was.
00:41:08
Speaker
And it was two very different tales. Jaguar was struggling, really struggling badly as it's as it's continued to struggle. Land Rover, on the other hand, mostly driven by Range Rover, had been incredibly successful.
00:41:23
Speaker
And so you you have these two different planets that you were managing in your solar system that one was really quite healthy, the other was quite sickly. And so both needs to be absolutely supportive and Jaguar's brand equity, its history and its heritage is is massively strong. It's just the product implementation and the commercial success was not strong.
00:41:44
Speaker
and And so then the ability to work with very different countries all around the globe, um where the brand had developed, very both brands had developed very differently. The teams had implemented the brands quite differently. The customer was responding to quite different elements of those brands was was was really instructive and and and educational.
00:42:12
Speaker
um the The big challenge at that particular time was there was a very, very dogmatic approach, actually from German leadership of Jaguar Land Rover. There was an extraordinarily narrow view of what the brands should be and an extraordinarily dogmatic approach of how we were going to force that and harmonize that across the world that I felt at that time did not respect the the level of maturity or the level of success that the brands were experiencing in different markets.
00:42:43
Speaker
I agreed mostly with the end goal. The timeline of implementation had to vary. But that was the internal, massive internal conflict conflict at the time within Jagger Landro.
00:42:57
Speaker
And then you become part, you become a diplomat again in in many ways because you are interacting with markets that are doing, in most cases, their best. They want, we all want the same thing. We want the brands to succeed. We want this to be a commercial success.
00:43:14
Speaker
But finding different ways to motivate, communicate and reiterate to each of these markets while managing the expectations of the of the headquarters that I existed in at that time was difficult. It was enjoyable, it was rewarding ultimately, um but it, it it It proves to be very difficult managing all of those different cultures and different ways of doing things simultaneously.
00:43:40
Speaker
It sounds then that if if you had such a dogmatic approach to the brand, that there probably wasn't much leeway for the markets to make any kind of adaptation to what they were doing in the market, right? you You had that in what a very narrow definition of the brand, and that's what you stuck to market by market by market.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yes, and and you you yeah you probably lived this during your career, John. I mean, the the concept of regional strategy and and regional adaptation or even regional product development. We talked about the M-Class once upon a time, the original M-Class.
00:44:18
Speaker
That was not something that was, there were easy conversations to to be able to have. There was a single strategy. the, the The potential success there was about how you actually packaged that strategy and when you deployed it and how you grew the market and developed the market to such a a point where you focused limited resources, how you prioritized that.
00:44:43
Speaker
Me at that time, i'm I'm effectively the transmission between the engine and the wheels and down in in the markets. And so managing all of the power and the influence that's coming from headquarters in a way in which the wheels can manage it, you know, was my job as as as the transmission to use kind of automotive metaphor.
00:45:03
Speaker
But I remember more about the successes there and about the just the energy, the enthusiasm and the passion that people had for the brands at ground level, at the regional level.
00:45:15
Speaker
That in that case, the first time in my career that I've experienced that where the passion is even greater at regional level than it was at headquarters. And that was just energy and enthusiasm that these was was accelerant and was fuel for the organization to continue to to to be successful and weather some of the challenges that it's gone through.
00:45:36
Speaker
So there is there is no doubt that ah the Land Rover brand or the Range Rover brand, they have massive fans. And they built a culture over over decades, right?
00:45:49
Speaker
And the Defender had a huge fan. And that huge fan decided he wanted to build his own Defender.
Launching Ineos Grenadier in the US
00:45:58
Speaker
So we can't end this podcast until you talk a little bit about Ineos and how that company was in terms of its culture, because it was a pure startup.
00:46:08
Speaker
um And it was a car rooted in its Britishness, ultimately built in France. And you had to convey that ah to the American market. this This is a story I would love to hear.
00:46:21
Speaker
As context for for the listeners or viewers of the podcast, um If you wind back the clock, I think to 2016, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, um at that time, maybe still Britain's wealthiest businessman, had effectively formed and grown a company called Ineos.
00:46:42
Speaker
Ineos is the third or the fourth largest petrochemical company in the world and and has grown over 25 years, which is a you know very, very short period of time, relatively speaking.
00:46:55
Speaker
to be this massive organization turning over maybe $80 billion dollars a year focused on chemicals. I mean, petrochemicals, oil and gas, specialty petrochemicals.
00:47:09
Speaker
um Privately held, very unusual for this company to be privately held. There is one main share shareholder, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and two other shareholders, Andy Curry and John Rhys, who effectively run these 36, 37 different businesses.
00:47:25
Speaker
ah mostly petrochemicals. And as you say, he he had seen the Land Rover Defender go out of production. The original Defender went out of production only in 2016. um Hasn't been in the US s for a long, long time. Was last sold here, I think, in 1997, but was seen around the world ubiquitously.
00:47:45
Speaker
um And he approached Jaguar Land Rover, wanted to buy the rights, the tools, the people, the factory, whatever it would be necessary to continue this line of vehicles because he was so sad. he couldn't see the vehicle that would possibly replace it.
00:48:00
Speaker
That was rebuffed and being of significant means, a man of significant means as well, how hard could it be? ah um Got together, I think, you know, a very interesting team of people and organizations that have lengthy experience in delivering vehicles, delivering vehicle programs, lengthy automotive experience.
00:48:22
Speaker
And what started off as a as an idea in a pub, then became project with a few people, then became the beginnings of an organization, which is when I jumped on board.
00:48:35
Speaker
And I was really impressed at the time by the the the quality and the caliber of the people that they had put together. um The very sort matter of matteroff fact forthrightness with which they were approaching the business, the pragmatism of the product in a,
00:48:53
Speaker
in an environment that I just come from Land Rover where the product was getting very, very complicated, very minimalist in some ways, but very complicated from an infotainment and an electronics perspective um was very much a departure from the very no nonsense, straightforward nature of the original Defender.
00:49:13
Speaker
Utilitarian, rugged, pragmatic, got the job done. That was the plan for the UNEOS Grenadier. And It was, know, this is ah at a time, this is 2020. We're still in the middle of COVID.
00:49:29
Speaker
and There's an awful lot of uncertainty. People have sort of had this mental transition of realizing what's really important in their lives. When things, when there is this existential threat, there's this thing that comes into your life that makes you really think about those things that are important.
00:49:47
Speaker
And I think for ah many, in many parts of the world, it of course was family. its relationships, um its living. And there was this sort of post pandemic pragmatism. i I think people came around to saying, look, you know we want something which isn't all frills and nonsense. you know This is actually something that enables us to go out and enjoy our lives to the fullest.
00:50:13
Speaker
And there was an element of ah ah that which the Grenadier really embodied. and And I really, had a quite emotional connection to it and the people that were doing it.
00:50:25
Speaker
And I had the ability, because i'm I'm a citizen of the US, the ability to to be able to say, yeah, I want to jump on board and I'm going to come and and run the Americas. um It was miraculous that the vehicle progressed in the time that it did.
00:50:41
Speaker
um My job was really twofold. Number one was sort of the operational side of things. I parachuted back into the US. I'm sitting here in North Carolina at the moment and ah wonderful place that we had chosen um after really quite some intensive research about where to put the headquarters.
00:51:03
Speaker
So the job was very operational. Where do we do this and what do we do? What is the product strategy? What is the timing? How do we make this work in what's going to be the biggest market in the world? The other part of my job in the in the politest possible way was educating others.
00:51:19
Speaker
You have petrochemical company that has no experience in automotive. Zero. You have people that have owned cars, used cars, used cars in anger, and you know, in many cases. And I mean that by ah sir Jim Safaris navigating to the North Pole, to the South Pole, going across continents on motorcycles and in vehicles, you know, really using them for their intended purpose to the extremes.
00:51:50
Speaker
That's kind of the limit to that knowledge. The process of of building your own organization and building your own car with manufacturing and supply chains and all the regulatory stuff that comes into it was was uncharted territory.
00:52:04
Speaker
um And so what I found certainly in the first half of my time with INEOS, that was a very ah kind of rewarding process of of ah going through that together, inspiring and debating, you well, why why is that that way? Why should it be that way?
00:52:21
Speaker
Locally, I had the the the challenge of finding the team. And in one way, it was an absolute dream because I had a blank piece of paper and I could put together my team in exactly the way that i i wanted to within reason.
00:52:39
Speaker
um And I had the ability to then go out and find partners, retail franchise partners that were going to come on this journey with us And in that way, i was so fortunate, again, to be able to pull on experiences that I'd had, lengthy experience in the US, lengthy experience with different brands, and also working with dealers in different countries all over the world to tell what I think was quite a compelling story and develop a very pragmatic approach to how we were going to do this.
00:53:13
Speaker
It's an incredible, incredible story, um simply because You know, every startup that we've heard about for the last decade has been an electric vehicle company.
00:53:24
Speaker
And this this was almost exactly the opposite, right? it's It's a new classic off-roader, right? It's a vehicle that was very proud of of its, let's say, internal combustion engine. Although I know there was an electric version um also discussed and and shown as a concept car.
00:53:45
Speaker
Branding wise, was a Britishness element to it? you know On the one hand, you have Land Rover and you have the Defender. and this vehicle has at least ah fairly passing resemblance to the Defender, at least the ah silhouette.
00:54:01
Speaker
um Does the brand have have kind of a matching silhouette? Yes, i i think to a degree that morphed into something that was more European, as it was clear that a lot of the engineering base was Germany and the manufacturing base was in in France, um which is a manufacturing facility that the company acquired from the Daimler organization from the Savings Bend, which was great. you know that These things were what allowed us to be able to launch in the time that we did.
00:54:30
Speaker
ah In terms of how that got conveyed to the customer, Yes, there were a lot of people that had a very deep emotional connection to either the product or the image of the original Defender.
00:54:42
Speaker
You mentioned safaris and the Serengeti and mountains and these big vistas, these very grand vistas, which really struck a chord with a lot of people that particularly here, that have very much gravitated towards other brands like Jeep, for example, as a way to get out.
00:55:03
Speaker
it's it's sort of um latching onto that culture of independence, which the American culture embraces so well is like, we can get out and I can be self-sufficient and I can go out for a weekend or a week or a month with my Jeep, my Ford Bronco, my Toyota, because the Land Cruiser's been incredibly successful and other Toyota products here as well.
00:55:26
Speaker
So I think the the market here was It was a very fertile ground for us to bring ah new competitor to. And you could argue that it's very competitive, which it is. i mean, the competitive set probably sells between five or 600,000 vehicles per year here now.
00:55:46
Speaker
And we're a fraction of that, a very small part of that. But in many ways, this was the greatest hits. The Grenadier was the greatest hits of all the 4x4, all the off-road products that had come before it and was a mashup, both from a design and a mechanical perspective of all these great things. And and and therefore, it really, really ah resonated a lot with these ah people that had used their vehicles for a utilitarian purpose or had wanted to go off-road and had
00:56:18
Speaker
kind of graduated to certain degrees out of Jeeps, out of the the you know the Wrangler or maybe the Cherokee that they were driving. And they wanted something that was a little bit larger, a little bit more refined.
00:56:31
Speaker
um I know, sorry, Jeep people, if they're listening to this, you know we could argue all day long and and no offences meant a huge respect for um for Jeep but forward and Ford and Toyota and everything that they've done.
00:56:44
Speaker
um But nevertheless, there was the market is big enough, there was a space. for us And it was about conveying who on earth is this company, this petrochemical company that knows nothing about automotive?
00:56:57
Speaker
You know, everybody has a right to be skeptical about that. And and it was my job. It was the job of of people who have long lengthy automotive experience to be able to acknowledge that. And I'm not sugarcoating it. It is what it is. But let me tell you why there are compelling reasons that the company is doing the right things to reassure you.
00:57:16
Speaker
That was effectively my job. And for dealers as well, coming on board, there were people that were very skeptical, but ultimately we attracted very well-respected, very attractive dealers to come on this journey with us that also lent us their equity in their own environments, their brand equity, their reputation by taking on our brand and ultimately offering a level of assurance or reassurance to a customer
00:57:47
Speaker
that, okay, this is really something that I can be confident in. It's a really great story. i i really love it. I've been following Ineos Grenadier since the very first moment that it it broke cover. I think it was like 2019 or so that it broke cover for the the very first time.
00:58:06
Speaker
Greg, thank you very much for joining this week on The Auto Ethnographer. This has been an amazing journey that you've been on, you know working for Mercedes, for American Honda,
00:58:17
Speaker
Jaguar Land Rover, and then ultimately Ineos, which is something really completely different. um But thank you very much for joining and and sharing this journey with us this week. John, it's been a a huge pleasure. It's nice to see you again. And and really, it's been a ah trip down memory lane. But it's been nice to be able to convey those things that I felt have been most educational for me. And I'm sure there are commonalities with with what many of your listeners have experienced in their own careers.
00:58:45
Speaker
um So yeah, I'd like to do it again sometime. We could talk for hours, I'm sure. I'm quite sure of that myself. So with that, thank you to all the listeners for joining in this week on the Auto Ethnographer.
00:58:57
Speaker
We'll be back next week. In the meantime, keep on driving. Thank you for joining us on today's journey. Please remember to like and subscribe to the Auto Ethnographer and leave us a rating or comment. For more information, visit our website at auto-ethnographer.com.
00:59:15
Speaker
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