Life’s good for Michael Ahn.
As current senior adviser and former president and chief executive officer of LG Electronics North America, Ahn has been a critical part of the company’s success overseas.
As a part of the weekly Wharton Leadership Lectures, Ahn gave a presentation Thursday night in Huntsman Hall recounting his experiences with LG and explaining the role leadership and brand management play in business development.
Ahn has a 34-year history with LG and served as its president and CEO from 2004 to 2010. He worked to merge LG’s widespread North American activities into a unified operation and to promote the LG brand as a reputable, reliable company in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
“Just a few years ago, LG was almost unknown in the market,” Ahn said. “How do you make a brand, relatively unknown, a premium brand in an industry? The product is the most important component of brand building.”
He stressed the importance of constant innovation and differentiation in a fledgling industry. “Changing a consumers’ brand perception is not easy at all,” he said. “But by establishing credibility by making reliable products, we penetrated this unknown market.”
Under Ahn’s initiative, LG Electronics’ North American revenues have grown 20 percent annually from $5.6 billion to over $13 billion.
In concluding his presentation, Ahn attributed a company’s success to the business manager’s mind set. According to Ahn, brand management should be the core responsibility for every business leader. “It does not end there,” he said. “Brand building is every employee’s number one job.”
Though retired from his position as president and CEO, Ahn continues to work with LG as a senior advisor. Using his extensive management skills in sales and marketing, he now provides brand marketing consultation to LG Electronics North America, small- and medium-sized businesses and nonprofit organizations.
Ahn is also actively involved in industry relations as chairman of the Korean-American Chamber of Commerce, as well as a lecturer on international marketing at Korea and Yonsei Universities.
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