'5+1' with Nicole Chen – Head of Marketing Europe at Aiways

_ BRAND STORY

Founded in 2017, Chinese brand Aiways is a new player on the automotive market offering all-electric cars. With the Aiways U5, the brand has brought its first fully electric car to its consumers on the European market. Recently we paid Aiways a visit at their European headquarters in Munich to get to know more about the brand, their vision and mission and most importantly to meet the people behind the brand. We had the pleasure to speak to three inspiring and strong women who are not only pushing the future of mobility forward, but also gender equality and diversity.

In our first ‘5+1’ interview meet Nicole Chen – Head of Marketing Europe at Aiways. Establishing a new brand on a still quite conservative automotive market is not an easy task. Learn more about what Aiways is doing to raise brand awareness and bring its cars to the consumers, about Nicole’s job and where she started her career, how diversity and gender distribution look like at Aiways and where Nicole sees the future of mobility in 2040.

1. You are Head of Marketing Europe at Aiways. What does your job there entail, and what is it that drives you at Aiways?

Our European headquarters is based in Munich. From here we are building up our brand from scratch for the European market – we increase brand awareness and credibility. As you know, the EV world is developing very fast. There is always change and chance. We cannot claim that we know the ultimate answer or have the final direction of the EV world. 

We need to develop our brand step by step and we need to learn from the consumers, from the markets and then gradually develop our brand strategy in the EV world. But as the EV world is quite new, nobody knows the answer. We already have our footprint in more than 10 European countries and we have marketing experts in all the local markets. Our marketing team here has a very important responsibility. The core function is that we need to ensure that our brand is compliant to the strategy in the various markets. Besides, we have several segments like marketing communications, Social Media, CRM, performance marketing etc. Each part for us is very important. And from here, we need to make sure that all the segments work well together to set up the brand from scratch. My daily job is to coordinate all the segments and also different departments, internal and external like importers, support sales etc. 

Aiways is a company that focuses on long tail and society. We are committed to provide everyone a joyful and fun driving experience with our electric vehicles. So everyone here works on that mission and is ambitious. Besides, we have a very good atmosphere. I really like the working style and culture. Everyone is friendly and wants to communicate with each others. I feel honored and proud to be part of the Aiways family

2. Have you always been interested in mobility and knew that you are going to work in this branch? Where did you start your career?

In the past I haven’t always been interested in mobility – before I started my first job. Then I figured out how interesting this industry is. It’s challenging but always full of opportunities. After I finished my Masters degree in the Netherlands, I started my first formal job at an agency as account executive, where I become acquainted with the automotive world due to the clients we had and the projects I worked on. The turning point of my career was my last job, which convinced me that I want to deepen my career in the automotive / mobility industry. My former company is the biggest automotive platform in the world that has more than forty million daily active users. There I set up and led the marketing team, also from scratch. So I had the opportunity to work with different OEMs and it’s very interesting to see the differences among them – from brand positioning to their strategy, claims, expansion plans, culture and so on. So for me this industry is highly interesting. 

3. Establishing a new brand on a still quite conservative automotive market is not an easy task. What is Aiways’ strategy to raise brand awareness and bring its electric cars to the consumer? What is the uniqueness of Aiways and do you communicate that proposition into the market and your consumer?

Nowadays, we have a lot of car manufacturers on the market. And many of them want to build high-end vehicles. Those car manufacturers try to create a lot of functions and features. But actually, maybe the people or users do not need all these kind of features and functions. So they stack up a lot of dazzling features but forget their original purpose, which is to serve people. The reason why Aiways was born is that we want to make life easier, instead of very complex. We want to focus on the human and make the driving experience fun, enjoyable and easy. As a start-up, we are very open to smart technology partners. So we will not say that we know the ultimate answer for the future or the final direction of this industry. If we find smart partners, then we are open to cooperate with them. It's a win win collaboration [with] partnerships. That’s a big difference between Aiways and other traditional car manufacturers.

Here at Aiways, we have a different business model compared to the OEMs especially on the German market. We do not cooperate with traditional dealers, we have Euronics. In my opinion, it’s a very cool idea to have our electric cars there. It helped us to develop quite fast in Germany because Euronics is already well settled in the German market. Also on our other markets, we have local experts to develop our company further and bring it to the market.

4. As we all know the mobility industry is still dominated by men. How do diversity and gender distribution look like at Aiways? Where do you see the benefits and chances of having more women in this industry?

There is a saying, no matter if it is a white or black cat, the cat who catches the mouse is a good cat. So here at Aiways, we look for candidates with the right skills that fit the position and the culture of Aiways. The gender doesn’t matter – the personality and skills are important when selecting the candidate. And a very interesting thing is, in our first line group, half of the people are women. So it's very balanced.

Men and a woman have different driving behaviours, and also tastes, as well as different requirements. Women are not only the passengers, they are also car drivers and car owners. So we as women can provide different perspectives and views – from marketing to sales. Women contribute a lot and also show their capability in many important roles in the automotive industry. Nowadays more and more women are coming to this industry and are working in various areas. 

5. Let’s talk about the future of mobility. How do you think will mobility look like in 2040?

I think in 2040 autonomous driving will be quite popular. Everyone will be able to enjoy their journey as we will not only need to focus on the road any longer. You will be able to relax while being driven. You can enjoy going through the city, looking at the sights but also have business meetings on your trip. Next to it, no one will need to suffer from traffic jams because connectivity will be developed quite well. And this means also fewer car accidents. That’s how I envision the future of mobility. What I also see is that the EV range will change – it will become better and better. People won’t worry about range anymore and also not about charging points. For example, where you park your car, you wont need charging cables or anything else as the car will be connected to the road and inductively charged. 

And the +1 question from Nicole to you:

“What was or will be the turning point in your mind when you decide to shift to full electric vehicles?“

Thank you Nicole for doing this insightful ‘5+1’ interview with us.

What we took along: Aiways has a very open team culture and a high level of internationality, even it’s a Chinese company. Men and women are being seen totally equally. The best gets the job no matter what nationality, gender or origin. We could definitely feel the team spirt, the great working atmosphere and culture. In our second ‘5+1’ interview, we will dive into the world of logistics and present you Alejandra Cruz very soon here on ellectric. Stay tuned.

Pictures: Aiways for ellectric