Pablo Martínez Masip receives the 'El Abrazote de Manolo' award

The ‘Abrazote de Manolo’ award, established in memory of our dear colleague Manolo Doménech by the Spanish COTY jury: Xavier Pérez (El Periódico), Rafael Guitart (Highmotor), Félix Cerezo (El Mundo), Pere Prat (La Vanguardia), Pedro Martín (Vocento) and Juan Ignacio Eguiara (Autopista). Juan Carlos Payo, head of mobility at Atrevia, former COTY member and promoter of the award, is secretary general.

Now well established as a benchmark award within the Spanish automotive landscape, the “Abrazote de Manolo” Award reminds us every year that, beyond milestones or results, what endures is the human impact. That legacy—the same one Manolo Doménech left among colleagues, journalists and industry professionals—remains the heart of this distinction.

All members of the Spanish COTY jury have decided to recognise, on this occasion, the professional work of Pablo Martínez Masip, vice president of product and marketing at Kia Europe, for his brilliant career in the automotive sector.

This award, which has now been held for twelve editions, has honoured figures of the calibre of Rafa Nadal, Carlos Sainz, José Muñoz, Emilio Herrera, José Vicente de Los Mozos, Luca de Meo, Walter de Silva, Alejandro Mesonero, Fermín Soneira, Agustín Martín, Rafael Prieto and Enrique Lorenzana.

Pablo Martínez Masip, vice president of Kia Europe, with more than 20 years of experience in the sector, has worked at companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Chrysler, and has a 15-year track record at Kia in the Product Planning, Pricing and Connected Services departments for Europe, before his promotion to Global Vice President of Customer Experience and subsequently to Vice President of Product and Marketing in Europe.

Pablo enthusiastically tells us how he got started in this exciting sector: “Since I was two years old I knew I wanted to work with cars. I had it very clear. I have always drawn cars, played with cars. I studied mechanical engineering because I wanted to work with cars and went to study in Munich. At that time my favourite brand was BMW. I wanted to work at BMW. I did internships at BMW. It was my first experience in the automotive world, and at first as an engineer. I didn’t really know how a car company worked, and with my first experiences I began to see what kinds of departments there are in the company and that there is product management, marketing, production, engineering. I gradually focused on the things I enjoyed most. And although I now have responsibility for more things, I identify with product planning. It is what interests me most; having worked in engineering, in production, in technical areas, also helps me professionally to understand how an engineer works, how a car is produced, what the limitations are, what the possibilities are…”

“Seeing that such important professionals in the sector have been able to recognise my career is something I really didn’t expect at all. I feel extremely excited to receive that affection from you. Now it’s not just about valuing results or achieving something; this is about human relationships. And having that affection from you is almost more important than the business results themselves. It really touches my heart. Seeing my name written alongside those giants gives me a bit of vertigo, because the people who have received this award are truly incredible. Now I feel almost even more pressure to keep moving forward, to achieve better results and to make sure our products and our customers are happy with Kia,” declares Pablo Martínez.

Kia, a company with clear foundations

“The company has always had a fairly clear strategy. When I arrived fifteen years ago, the company’s first strategy was to have quality, to ensure that every product we bring to the market has an extremely high level of quality. We created the famous seven-year warranty and set out to earn customers’ trust. From that point of view, a few years later certain very important figures were hired, such as Peter Schreyer, who made the design of our cars incredible, so that customers would not only buy the car for the more rational reason of quality, but would also feel a more emotional attraction to the product. And obviously it gave us phenomenal results. In the next step, besides having quality and design, we began to improve technology, to become leaders in all matters of electrification, and in something we arrived at internally. We always used to say that at the beginning we were, in a way, fast followers. Then we stopped looking at what others were doing to start having a unique way of thinking, different from the rest. We became first movers. And that is when we started thinking about cars for them: cars that, in a way, nobody had thought of before. We were the first to launch cars of that kind. That is the progression we have had: starting with quality, design and technology. We will always be at the frontier of what we are going to do, something new, something different, that nobody has done. The world used to move at a slower pace, and now development is faster and faster.”

Not only product

“Now the product itself is important, with all the electrification. The product is a very important factor, but so is everything around the product. The charging network, how easily the customer can operate the vehicle, the services around the product so that it becomes an experience.”

“Chinese brands have moved very fast; they have the largest domestic market in the world. From the point of view of product planning, we have to look at the things they are doing well, compare them with what we are doing, and if there are things they do better, try to see not what they are doing now, but what they are going to do. In the end it is a race with the Chinese, with the Europeans, with the Japanese, with any brand.”

Future strategy

“We have a strategic vision of where we want to be in 2035. I think the most important factors are growth on the one hand—continuing to grow in Europe, but also doing so in a sustainable way. In a sense we have grown over the last fifteen years, and the plan for the next ten years is to keep growing. Perhaps not as fast as we have in the last fifteen years, because we have already reached a market share at which it is no longer possible to keep growing at that pace. We are very flexible and we have a direction in which we would like to go. But if the European Union decides that we are going to change and go in another direction, we will adapt, and we will adapt faster than anyone and launch the products that are right for the market. We have a fairly detailed plan, like all companies.”

The way of thinking in Korea is very pragmatic. You don’t spend time on things you cannot change. If something changes, you don’t sit around complaining that they did this or they did that. If something changes, what matters is seeing what we have to do to optimise our result based on what has changed. We don’t have to waste time complaining about what they have said or done; we concentrate on what needs to be done. Let’s see how we optimise our processes and our product so we can get the best result from what we have.”

In my personal opinion, I think we will keep more conventional cars, such as combustion, hybrid and plug-in hybrid, for much longer than we are thinking now. There are many conditions that make electrification more feasible in one place or another.”

Electrification, a continuous process

“When customers buy an electric car for the first time, they generally value range much more. When customers drive electric cars for a second time, they value charging speed more. So right now I think range is more important from now to five years from now. I think charging speed is going to become more important. And it is also related to the fact that the network of fast charging stations is not as large.

The charging speed we have in our cars is good, but what really matters is battery health. After one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty thousand kilometres, we have the best battery health of any brand.”