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Dieter Zetsche (; born on 5 May 1953) is a German engineer and business executive. He is the chairman of TUI AG. He was the chairman of the board of management of
Daimler AG The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufactu ...
and head of
Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to as Mercedes and sometimes as Benz, is a German luxury and commercial vehicle automotive brand established in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a Mercedes-Benz Group subsidiary established in 2019) is headquarte ...
until 22 May 2019, a role he had held since 2006, in addition to being a member of the company's board since 1998.


Early life and education

Zetsche was born while his father, Herbert Zetsche, a civil engineer, was temporarily in Turkey for a dam construction project. The family returned to Germany in 1956. He attended school in Oberursel (near
Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...
) and studied
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
from 1971 to 1976 at the
University of Karlsruhe The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public university, public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT wa ...
; he graduated as an engineer. He completed his doctorate in engineering in 1982 at the
University of Paderborn Paderborn University (german: Universität Paderborn) is one of the fourteen public research universities in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It was founded in 1972 and 20,308 students were enrolled at the university in the wint ...
.


Career


Daimler

Zetsche joined the research department of
Daimler-Benz The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufactu ...
in 1976, and became assistant development manager at the Vehicles business unit in 1981. He became a member of Daimler Chrysler's board of management in 1998 and served as the president and CEO of Chrysler Group from mid-2000 to 31 December 2005, where he was credited with a turnaround of DCX's American operations. Since 1 January 2006, he succeeded Jürgen Schrempp as chairman of DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler AG), being succeeded in the position of Chrysler Group CEO by Thomas W. LaSorda. Zetsche was the main influence behind the demerger of Daimler and
Chrysler Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automotiv ...
in 2007, which ended in the newly formed
Daimler AG The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufactu ...
. Following profit warnings in 2012 and 2013, weak sales in China and tensions with Daimler's powerful labour representatives, his contract was renewed for only three years instead of the expected five.Andy Sharman (April 1, 2015)
Daimler set to reward Dieter Zetsche with extended contract
''
Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...
''.
He received €14.4 million in pay and bonuses in 2014, making him the second-highest paid employee at a listed German company. After a record year for car sales and revenue in 2015, Zetsche's contract was extended to 2019. Zetsche is credited with bringing significant core changes to Mercedes-Benz, in an effort to turn around a decade-long downward spiral in product quality and customer satisfaction. He was named in ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' magazine's 2006 list of 100 most influential people. On the invitation of the
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation f ...
’s leadership, Zetsche was invited to address the 2016 party conference. In September 2018, it was announced that Zetsche will step down as the company's CEO in May 2019, in compliance of a two-year-long hiatus regulatory rule, before becoming chairman of Daimler's supervisory board in 2021, succeeding Manfred Bischoff.


Ask Dr. Z campaign

On 30 June 2006 Chrysler Group announced the Employee Pricing Plus program, which featured Dieter Zetsche as Dr. Z (Doctor ''Zee''), the DaimlerChrysler spokesman for a series of US and Canadian
television commercial A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...
s, also animated in cartoon format on the company's Ask Dr. Z website, which began on 1 July. The "Ask Dr. Z" campaign included television, radio, print, online, in-dealership and customer relationship marketing media components and aggressive marketing tactics (mobile billboards, aerial banners, street teams), as well as targeting the NASCAR fan community. In the "Ask Dr. Z" ad campaign he provides answers to customers' questions and exits by saying ''Auf Wiedersehen'' (German for "goodbye" or "see you again"). The ad campaign emphasized the consumer benefits of combined American and German engineering and design. One commercial included Zetsche riding in a Jeep Liberty while crossing a pile of logs; another showed him in the trunk of a Dodge Caravan minivan, heading a soccer ball; and the last showed him at the wheel of a Chrysler Pacifica during a crash test, then emerging from the wreckage unscathed. The campaign was criticized for having the wrong guy for doing funny ads. CNW Marketing Research poll showed most people thought Dr. Z was a fictional character, did not notice the employee discount offer in the ads and radio commercial listeners had difficulty understanding his German accent. DaimlerChrysler hurriedly withdrew the Dr. Z campaign three months later, due to a significant loss in market share. However, some of the Dr. Z ads can still be seen on Canadian television. In later broadcasts, the tagline in Dr. Z TV ads was changed to "See the best in German and North American design in your Dodge and Chrysler dealer." As a response to shrinking sales, its employee pricing plus program was extended through the end of August and three new TV ads, which did not feature Dr. Z, were added to the August campaign.


TUI AG

In February 2018, before the announcement of his departure from Daimler, in the annual general meeting held by tourism company TUI AG, Zetsche was elected as a member of the supervisory board. In May, he was elected chairman of TUI’s Supervisory Board.


Other activities (selection)


Corporate boards

*
TUI Group TUI Group is a German leisure, travel and tourism company. TUI is an acronym for ''Touristik Union International'' ("Tourism Union International"). TUI AG was known as Preussag AG until 1997 when the company changed its activities from mining to ...
, Chair of the Supervisory Board (since 2019) *
Aldi Süd Aldi (stylised as ALDI) is the common company brand name of two German multinational family-owned discount supermarket chains operating over 10,000 stores in 20 countries. The chain was founded by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in 1946, when ...
, Member of the Advisory Board (since 2019) *
Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York St ...
, Member of the European Advisory Board (2006–present) * RWE, Member of the Supervisory Board (2009–2016)


Non-profit organizations

* Federation of German Industries (BDI), Member of the Presidium (2018–2019) * Deutscher Zukunftspreis, Member of the Board of Trustees * German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), Vice President of the Managing Board * European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), Member of the Board of Directors * European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Chairman of the International Advisory Council * Baden-Badener Unternehmer-Gespräche (BBUG), Member of the Board of Trustees *
Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in e ...
, Member of the International Advisory Council * Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, Member of the Board * Turkey: Culture of Change Initiative (TCCI), Member of the Advisory Board


Controversy

In the autumn of 2011, Zetsche was investigated for the involuntary manslaughter of a 27-year-old engineer who died in an accident caused by an intern on one of the firm's test tracks. The newspaper ''Stuttgarter Zeitung'' reported earlier that the parents of the engineer felt the company should not have put the intern behind the wheel of a fast car on a test track. However, it was generally agreed that the public prosecutors were over-reaching their prosecutorial authority in holding Zetsche responsible, as he was not responsible in any way for regulating the limits of interns' activities while at the company.


References


External links


Dr. Dieter Zetsche
at Daimler * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Zetsche, Dieter 1953 births Living people Chrysler executives Mercedes-Benz Group executives DaimlerChrysler German chief executives German automotive engineers German electrical engineers Businesspeople from Stuttgart TUI Group Paderborn University alumni Engineers from Hesse Mercedes-Benz in Formula One