Steering old brand in new direction

Vice-president of Volvo Group China is helping shape the identity of the commercial vehicle division

Lansi Jiang has her eyes set on the target, target audience that is. The vice-president of Volvo Group China says the Swedish commercial vehicle maker for more than 80 years has evoked a powerful image of a high-end automaker, even though its car business accounted for only a small part of its revenue.

But since Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, China's largest private automaker, took over Volvo Cars from Ford Motor Co in 2010, Jiang has been working hard to rebrand its image.

"Volvo Group has a wide range of business - from construction equipment, trucks, buses, to aircraft engine components - but most people know our brand through Volvo cars and its association with vehicle safety," she says during an interview in her office in Beijing.

"As China is one of most important markets for Volvo Group, we need to build up the brand as a commercial vehicle maker instead of just an automaker," she says.

It is by no means an easy task. The 45-year-old executive says marketers on her team are like backstage heroes, because branding in a business-to-business market such as construction machinery seems invisible to the public and its importance is always overlooked.

"But brand matters, even more important in the B2B industry than in the consumer market, because enterprise customers will reward a brand which delivers a unified, consistent and satisfying experience with repeat business," Jiang says.

This is why Jiang, who just returned from a Volvo-sponsored yacht race in Sanya, China's hottest coastal resort, has been busy organizing sporting events to bring the brand from behind the stage and move it front and center.

"Staging a high-profile sports event ... provides a platform to build a strong brand by aligning brand values with the values of sports," says Jiang, who invited hundreds of corporate guests to the event.

Apart from the yacht competition, Volvo has sponsored the Volvo China Open golf tournament and Boao Forum for Asia, a nonprofit organization that hosts forums for leaders from government, business and academia in Asia.

The results are obvious. The Volvo Ocean Race only made one stop in China - Sanya - in mid-February, and Jiang says Volvo sold more than 2,000 excavators in two weeks.

"Through these events, we will keep Volvo under the spotlight, which supports both business development and the event itself," she says.

Throughout her long career, which began when Jiang graduated from Beijing Normal University with an education degree in 1989, she experienced a trajectory that many professionals can only dreamed of. But it wasn't easy.

With no relevant higher education and no professional experience, Jiang was still able to climb the gilded corporate ladder.

She remembers the sleepless nights fretting about learning the trade and technical terms, such as loaders, excavators, and wheel-loaders, and building a team from next to nothing to more than 60 members. She was also involved in opening a construction machinery production base in Shanghai.

In the early years of her career, she was often the youngest and one of the only female executives at any given meeting.

Once she went alone to a corporate meeting that took place at another company. The manager mistook her for an assistant, asking her where her boss was. "She is standing right here in front of you," Jiang said, leaving the manager astonished.

Armed with knowledge acquired from 16 years of working experience, Jiang's role in the company has been more than just brand building, marketing and corporate communications.

She was the chief representative of the construction equipment division of Volvo's Shanghai office and is currently chairwoman of the group's construction equipment unit, which has become a major business for Volvo Group China accounting for more than 80 percent of its revenue.

The company has concentrated on selling excavators to China's high-end market for nearly a decade. Since China rolled out a series of stimulus plans in the construction sector to boost the economy, Volvo's business in construction machinery manufacturing has also taken off.

Last year, Volvo construction equipment kept its first position in wheel-loader and excavator sales in China, taking about 12 percent of the market share.

But during the second half of 2011, particularly in the third quarter, the excavator market slowed slightly as the nation put the brakes on some construction projects in an attempt to cool its overheated economy.

"Though the market was a little gloomy last year, the growth rate was still there, and need will remain high when the timing is right," she says.

Construction machinery sales in China are expected to reach 900 billion yuan ($142 billion, 103 billion euros) by 2015, compared with 400 billion yuan in 2010.

Demand for construction equipment is expected to grow by 17 percent every year between 2011 and 2015, according to estimates from the China Machinery Industry Federation.

Volvo, the world's second-largest truck maker, raked in $45.8 billion (34.8 billion euros) in net sales for 2011, up 17 percent year-on-year. On the upside, the annual growth rate of Volvo construction equipment last year in the Chinese market hit 20 percent.

Although China is already the third-largest market for Volvo Group, the mother of a 16-year-old daughter admits there is still a lot to accomplish.

"I joined the company the same year I had my daughter, so Volvo is like my other child," she says. "I think I won't retire until I make China the largest market for Volvo."

lvchang@chinadaily.com.cn