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MIR: Beiersdorf is one of the leading companies in the area of skin care. At first glance, the company seems to be more concerned with beauty and a sense of well-being than technology or digitalization. Overall, how much does the topic of digital transformation have to do with you?

Martin Wulle: The digital transformation is part of everyday-life at Beiersdorf and a fundamental element of our corporate strategy. Naturally, marketing and sales are affected most of all but so too are areas like the entire supply chain and human resources. We have developed a road map for digitalization within the context of our “Blue Agenda” corporate strategy and   set clear targets through 2020.

MIR: Tradition-rich companies of a certain size are not really regarded as the most receptive to changes. With its 130-year history and more than 17,000 employees worldwide, how does Beiersdorf deal with the digital age?

Martin Wulle: We engage here at several levels in order to involve as many employees as possible. First of all, we want to increase the digital IQ of our employees through very specific educational programs, such as e-learning and our own digital campus. At the same time, we bring external expertise into the company through digital specialists.  We have already been successful with employees collaborating in an agile environment in what we call our digital factory.

MIR: Could you describe your digital factory in a bit more detail?

Martin Wulle: The digital factory has its own location, physically separated from Beiersdorf. We have a wide range of professionals clustered there for developing digital projects, such as user experience (UX) designers, developers, agencies and marketers. The space looks entirely different from the traditional company, and its mode of operation is completely new. For example, there are no longer any fixed workstations. You see the most important project key figures on enormous live dashboards in real time as well as our paid, owned and earned activities, such as our website analytics and our social media activities, made visible through real-time monitoring. There is a relatively good mix of openness, creativity and traditional brand product thinking.

MIR: Are they all your own people or independent contractors?

Martin Wulle: Both. There are Beiersdorf employees assigned to work there. But some are there, for example, only two days per week for special projects. On the other hand, there are also many external parties, such as digital agencies, with which we cooperate openly and flexibly in an agile environment. In any case, the teams are all very interdisciplinary.

MIR: And how do you introduce the projects, themes and applications back into Beiersdorf?

Martin Wulle: We imagine it like a bonfire. I pile up all the wood in one place so the fire catches properly. Once the individual pieces of wood are burning well, I can distribute the embers and ignite a fire in the company itself. If in a few years all Beiersdorf has adapted to the digital world, then the outsourced areas can possibly be dissolved.

MIR: And does the digital campus ensure that the embers in the company are not immediately extinguished and that the remaining employees adopt the new topics?

Martin Wulle: Yes, we really do address all employees and offer both basic information and specific technical advanced expertise for individual areas. We launched the digital campus in 2013, and this year we are expanding the offering significantly again.

MIR: During recruitment do you attach particular importance to digital skills?

Martin Wulle: Naturally, we also search for people with specific expertise, e.g, in e-commerce, UX design or search engine optimization (SEO) -  and content experts from media companies. For university graduates we have established our own digital trainee program, and our cross-company trainee program in cooperation with Tchibo has some digital focus areas, for example, on e-commerce. But all these experts are of little use if they do not interact with existing employees. Therefore, we strive to help virtually everyone adapt to the topic.

MIR: Expertise is one thing, but the digital world moves much more quickly. How do you incorporate a fast pace and dynamism into internal and external processes at Beiersdorf?

Martin Wulle: This is indeed very difficult for a large company, but we are trying to accomplish this by forming small, agile project teams that can operate and make decisions as independently as possible. You cannot expedite things with existing processes. We scrutinize such processes, suspend them and create a deliberate vacuum that creates space for entrepreneurship. Yet at a company that has been extraordinarily successful for decades the willingness to change cannot be taken for granted. We have to be creative and really fight for it at times.

MIR: Digitalization requires mastering new technologies. Does traditional marketing thinking fall by the wayside and become obsolete?

Martin Wulle: No. Brands are and will remain an essential anchor given today’s flood of information. I simply must know what my brand stands for, how it is positioned and what its benefits and promises are. Only a brand that delivers reliable, constant quality can stay relevant. These things are often brushed aside by too much technology. Everyone hires influencers or produces some kind of content in order to latch onto digital buzzwords. This often creates things that do not bear any relationship to the brand or have any relevance to the consumer.