Lan Zhenzhen: She went from assistant to vice president in 13 years. "In our era, there were no opportunities to choose. The only choice was to seize the opportunities that flashed in front of us." Over forty When Lan Zhenzhen said this, her expression was very calm.
In 1993, an interview was taking place in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Hong Kong.
The interviewee was 30-year-old Lan Zhenzhen. Her husband was on vacation in Thailand at the time, and she moved from a French island to Hong Kong to find a job.
She was born in an era when knowledge was not valued. After graduation, she worked from a travel company to the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station, and then to Europe, and then returned to Hong Kong to look for job opportunities in order to save her marriage.
The French passport she owns allows her to stay in Hong Kong for three months without a visa. The visa will expire in a week. Lan Zhenzhen bet all her chips on L'Oreal.
The French boss of L’Oréal Hong Kong asked some basic information and quickly made a decision: "OK, we invite you, no problem."
Thirteen years later, she became a The assistant has been the vice president of L'Oreal (China).
"In our time, there was no choice. The only choice was to seize the opportunity that flashed in front of us." When Lan Zhenzhen, who is over forty, said this, her expression was very calm. .
The restlessness that sprouted in the 1970s
“I would rather spend my time managing creative and restless people than someone who follows the rules and has no inspiration.” This is Lan Zhenzhen’s famous saying.
In Lan Zhenzhen, there has been an unstable element hidden since she was a child.
As the only girl in the family, Lan Zhenzhen, like many girls in the west, has to take on a lot of housework, including taking care of her brother, who is 7 years younger than her. In addition, childhood memories are also full of fighting scenes in small mountain villages in Chongqing.
My father was born into a revolutionary family, and most of the family members had the experience of studying in France in the 1930s. Her father and mother were deeply influenced by their family. Their only advice to Lan Zhenzhen was to "study hard" and give up many tasks of "study work" and "study agriculture", even if they were labeled as "not active" .
Lan Zhenzhen has seen France in yellowed photos since she was a child, and heard about France from her parents’ brief conversations. These became the reasons for her to choose French literature in college.
“I always read by the stove while doing housework.” She recalled. More often than not, she has to get up in the morning to clean, go home after school to cook and wash clothes, and her reading time must be mixed in with these trivial housework.
In the early 1980s, she got her wish and was admitted to university. This was the first turning point in her life.
After graduation, Lan Zhenzhen was assigned to a tourism company affiliated with the Chengdu Foreign Affairs Office, engaged in foreign-related tourism. Lan Zhenzhen believes that as a graduate of the Department of Foreign Languages, this is a pretty good job that allows her to see the world through foreign tourists and travel opportunities all over the world.
The language she learned in the closed era finally became an important skill and became a compensation for the oppression she suffered in the closed world.
Passive leap
In 1986, Lan Zhenzhen came to Daya Bay from Chengdu. She commented that her move at that time was completely "passive". < /p>
From a job transfer in relatively conservative Chengdu to Guangzhou, which had a strong atmosphere of reform and opening up at that time, household registration was the primary obstacle. Lan Zhenzhen made great efforts for this, and even did not hesitate to find connections to open a "back door."
More than a year later, Lan Zhenzhen got her wish and got the opportunity to go to France.
To this day, Lan Zhenzhen still remembers this scene: on the way from Charles de Gaulle Airport to central Paris, she was carrying two large suitcases with a tired face; a huge neon advertisement Flash forward - a typical French woman wearing French designer clothes, strolling on the streets of Paris.
For China in the 1980s, this was an almost completely unfamiliar way of life, and Lan Zhenzhen had been deeply attracted by it.
Before her work in France was about to end, Lan Zhenzhen made one of the boldest moves in her life—resigning from her job in Daya Bay and staying in France.
Later, she followed her husband to the French island of New Caledonia.
On that small island with beautiful beaches and ocean climate, Lan Zhenzhen still couldn't get the recognition she longed for.
“Back then, when the people on the island heard that they were Chinese, their expressions changed.” In order to obtain opportunities, Lan Zhenzhen got her first job on the island of New Caledonia after struggling. I got it after studying Japanese.
“Don’t give up easily on anything. There are almost no opportunities to choose from at work, you can only seize them.” Lan Zhenzhen said.
After a brief training in Japan, Lan Zhenzhen returned to the island. Due to the crisis in her marriage, she did not continue to work stably in that Japanese company, but chose to return to Asia.
At this time, she was already 30 years old, but she had to start from the grassroots level of a company. Regardless of her education, work experience and age, she knew that she was not as good as young people.
L’Oréal’s 13 Years
In 1993, Hong Kong was experiencing rapid economic development, and anyone who did not speak Cantonese would be discriminated against. Lan Zhenzhen sent her resume to many companies, but received few responses.
She made phone calls in fluent French or English and pretended to be a personal friend of her boss. Many bosses seriously rejected Lan Zhenzhen on the phone.
Although the boss of L'Oreal knew that she was lying, he still agreed to meet.
“I was very excited and even dressed up deliberately.” Zhenzhen said. She wore a small suit with a small red sweater underneath, which was a bit earthy. At the end of the interview, the boss made a point of saying, "Your red sweater is particularly beautiful." This sentence inspired Lan Zhenzhen - "Never hurt a person's efforts." She later paid great attention to this point at L'Oreal.
A boss, a secretary, and a marketing assistant, this was the entire lineup of the mainland business preparation team of L'Oréal Hong Kong Company at that time.
As a marketing assistant, Lan Zhenzhen not only serves tea and water every day, but also collects market information, administration, and even advertising. She has to do a lot of work from counter image, product packaging, to classification placement and lighting rationalization.
In 1997, after L'Oreal had a mature understanding and exploration of the Chinese market, it decided to officially set up a branch in China. As a veteran, Lan Zhenzhen moved from Hong Kong to Shanghai.
At the beginning, there were seven or eight people and a dozen guns. The initial working place was just a few rooms rented in the business center of a commercial building, without even an actual office. For several weeks, day and night, we negotiated contracts, decorations, and furniture.
Later, when the company placed the burden of the "public relations department" on Lan Zhenzhen, she was not good at communicating with others and even didn't want to work for a while.
Before the company opened, Lan Zhenzhen was still instilling new concepts in hair dyeing to reporters. She hopes L'Oreal can bring some kind of innovation to society. In Shanghai at that time, there were some concepts that were even rebellious.
Her efforts were not in vain. Since then, topics about new ideas for hair dyeing and makeup began to appear in the newspapers. Lan Zhenzhen successfully promoted L'Oreal's product range. Not only does media promotion, but also external communication of the company and culture.
“This industry is very trivial and indeed very hard. However, it would be a pity if we could not feel the beauty in this industry.” In the office next to Jing’an Temple, Lan Zhenzhen held a fine porcelain Tea cup, very calm.
Now, as Vice President of L’Oréal China, Lan Zhenzhen needs to spend more time doing work at different levels such as strategy and company team.
“With Shanghai as the center, L’Oréal is increasingly strengthening its regional strength. China is too big, equivalent to more than a dozen countries. And I need to improve the company image in each region. ." Zhenzhen said. ;