Digital Strategies of Daimler, Springer, Telekom

The digital transformation of society is advancing inexorably. Companies must adapt their business models accordingly and integrate e-business elements that align with their brand essence. We took a look at parts of the digital strategies of three major DAX-listed corporations from three different industries that we have been following more closely in recent years. For other companies, these can serve as inspiration to also explore additional business opportunities in the digital world. After all, those who do not take this step risk being pushed out of the increasingly digitized market sooner or later.

1. Daimler: MyTaxi, car2go, RideScout

Daimler AG and its predecessor, Daimler-Benz AG, have implemented numerous strategies to secure their future since 1926. Legendary is the strategy of Edzard Reuter, who forged Daimler into an integrated technology group with products on land (passenger and truck manufacturing: Mercedes-Benz) and in the air (aircraft manufacturing: EADS). Size and multiple revenue streams were intended to guarantee stability and returns. Thus, Daimler acquired major industrial companies such as AEG, MTU, and MBB. In today’s digital world, however, a modified strategy is needed. While Daimler remains committed to its brand core of “mobility,” which has existed since 1890, the mergers and acquisitions list of current CEO Dieter Zetsche includes comparatively small startups as part of its digital strategies.

One of these is Intelligent Apps GmbH, founded in 2009 in Hamburg. The buyer is moovel GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler AG that emerged from Daimler Mobility Services GmbH. The company moovel, which is organizationally assigned to Daimler Financial Services AG, offers several digital mobility services. These include the car-sharing service car2go, which—naturally—uses vehicles from Mercedes-Benz (smart fortwo, including electric models). In 26 cities across Europe and North America, 10,500 vehicles are now available to members of the car2go community. Since driving without parking spaces isn’t possible, moovel also offers a service for people looking for parking. The corresponding app is called Park2gether and connects parking space owners with those seeking parking.

And for those who neither want to drive themselves nor need a parking spot, but can’t do without a car ride, there’s the option to hire a taxi. For this target group, moovel has myTaxi—now the world’s largest taxi app (over 10 million downloads)—in its portfolio. This allows users to order a taxi via smartphone and receive a fare estimate before the ride begins. For those who want even more mobility, the RideScout app—also acquired by Daimler/moovel—provides all the information on bus, train, and commuter rail connections, bike routes, taxis, car-sharing, ridesharing, parking options, and walking routes at a glance.
With this and other digital strategies, the Daimler Group is solidifying its position in the market as a comprehensive provider of mobility services—from cars to apps, so to speak.

2. Axel Springer: Runtastic & Co.

Axel Springer SE has its roots in traditional publishing, namely journalism and the printing business. As is well known, returns in this sector have been declining for years. A reversal of this trend is not realistic. Consequently, Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner sold print titles such as the “Berliner Morgenpost” and the “Hamburger Abendblatt” as well as lifestyle magazines like “Hörzu” in 2013. To secure its future, Springer—which aims to become “the leading digital publisher”—is instead consistently expanding its digital business. For years, the core brand “Publication” has included stakes in leading online classifieds portals that have replaced the classified ads in the print titles. These include, for example, StepStone, one of the leading job boards in Europe. In the real estate sector, Springer holds stakes in, among others, SeLoger, France’s leading real estate portal; yad2, Israel’s leading real estate portal; and Immonet, one of Germany’s leading real estate portals. All are part of the media company’s digital strategies.

In addition to the diversification and paid content offerings behind paywalls that are common for publishers today, Axel Springer SE also invests in startups (including through its Plug and Play Accelerator) as well as in companies that may not necessarily fit the brand essence of a consumer publisher at first glance. One example is the Austrian sports app developer runtastic GmbH from Linz. Last fall, Springer acquired a 50.1 percent stake in the company, which is one of the world’s leading providers of mobile apps for tracking sports and fitness data.

With this move, the media company expanded, in its own words, “its digital sports portfolio centered on the core brands BILD, BILD am SONNTAG, SPORT BILD, and WELT.” Axel Springer had already acquired a majority stake in the soccer portal transfermarkt.de back in 2008. Since the 2013/2014 season, BILD has been offering highlight videos from the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga on all digital channels of BILD.de.” And, of course, Axel Springer SE can profitably market the data of the now more than 70 million runtastic users worldwide.

In this way, too, the company is helping to secure its future through e-business and digital strategies.

3. Telekom: Spotify und Humin

Deutsche Telekom AG has had to work hard over the past 20 years to ensure its future viability. The path from the Deutsche Bundespost to its split into the three companies Deutsche Post AG (Yellow Post), Deutsche Postbank AG (Blue Post), and Deutsche Telekom AG (Gray Post) in the late 1990s was a rocky one. The last German Minister of Posts, Dr. Wolfgang Bötsch, played a key role in the privatization. The early days in the market were challenging, and internationalization was still in its infancy. Anyone whose media history dates back to that time surely remembers that “T-Mobil” was actually still spelled without an “e” in 1999.

Nevertheless, Telekom was a pioneer in digitalization, if only because it helped build the necessary network technology here in Germany. The digitalization of our society today would not be possible without the necessary infrastructure. Even if, from the user’s perspective, network expansion often proceeds too slowly and net neutrality is not sufficiently guaranteed. Connecting society and its people is part of Deutsche Telekom AG’s brand essence. Thus, it has long since ceased to offer only telephone networks and devices, but is also, for example, a provider of Internet television (Entertain).

Under its slogan “Experience what connects,” it also encompasses entertainment offerings such as music. For instance, Telekom participated in the Musicload service as early as the beginning of the 2000s and released mobile phones with integrated MP3 players (e.g., the SDA music). Now that the market for music downloads is collapsing in favor of music streaming services, Telekom is also changing its strategy in this sector. In the spring of this year, it discontinued Musicload and began cooperating with the Swedish music streaming startup Spotify, founded in 2008.

Another example of the integration of digital market strategies at Deutsche Telekom AG is its partnership with the American startup Humin. The goal of this app is to optimize the organization of contacts in (Telekom) smartphones. According to the industry service Gründerszene, Telekom plans to promote the app and possibly even pre-install it on its smartphones.

Picture: Deutsche Telekom AG