A warm welcome to AEG's Global Media Conference at IFA 2024, and greetings to our dedicated colleagues around the world, including those at the Electrolux headquarters in Stockholm. Please note that this event will be live-streamed. So let's get to it. Prepare yourselves for an inspiring session, and give a round of applause to Electrolux Group CEO for Europe and Asia, Anna Ohlsson-Leijon.
Thank you. What an exciting day here at IFA, and what an exciting day here in Berlin, the actual birthplace of AEG, close to one hundred and forty years ago in 1887. At AEG, we take great pride in our heritage and the way tradition and innovation feeds off each other and propels us into the future. And when we think about the early days of IFA, maybe you think about those black and white photos of Albert Einstein at the inaugural speech of IFA in 1930. But what I think might be less well known to you is that Einstein was actually the technical advisor of AEG, starting already in the 1920s. At AEG, we believe in making the everyday better. And in this everyday, it's difficult to imagine some of the innovation and products we have produced and brought to the market over the years.
Let's think about over a hundred years ago, we actually produced and brought to the market in Europe, the electric light bulb. We launched the iconic Vampyr 100 vacuum cleaner over a hundred years ago, and our innovation process is based on deep consumer insights. In the 1950s, we launched the first fully automatic washing machine, attending to the needs of consumers at the time to save time when they take care of their clothes, and in the 1980s, we listened to consumers when they said they want to lead a more sustainable life. We introduced the first vacuum cleaner with a sustainability button. One problem of consumers in the 1990s was the fact that their dishwasher, washers were very noisy in the kitchen. We listened, and we responded with the most quiet dishwasher developed.
In 2016, here in Berlin, we launched a full lineup of AEG products, and in that lineup, we had one shining star, a product that still has a hero place in our range, and I'm talking about the dishwasher, the ComfortLift, with a unique lower basket that moves towards you and up for easy, ergonomic unloading and loading, and last year was a truly proud moment when we launched the world-first AEG Saphir Matt Induction Hob. Sleek, matte, beautiful finish, and four times scratch-resistant surface. We are proud to push boundaries, and it is our ambition to challenge the expected that truly sets us apart, and here we are now celebrating this pioneering spirit with our best-ever launch of a full kitchen of AEG, and this is also the biggest-ever launch we have made in our history at AEG.
We do this responding to the needs of consumers today for more premium experiences and for more innovative, effortless, everyday living, and we believe it's the right time to launch this innovation. We've listened to consumers, and we know they value high-quality products from brands they trust. They want to have personalized experiences, and we know that more than the majority of consumers today want to live a sustainable life. This full solution kitchen responds to all those consumer needs, and it's based on three pillars. The first one is assisted cooking redefined. What is this? When I'm throwing a dinner party, or after a stressful week, I want to put a healthy meal on the table for my family of four, I go to the internet, and I search for a recipe. I follow the recipe, and I put it in my oven. Here...
And I'm not alone in that, clearly. We know that 80% of consumers do like I do... But here, we create a taste gap for consumers. Because the fact is that the modern technology and cooking techniques we have today available to us in our ovens does not respond to the strict traditional settings that is stated in the recipe. We have found a way to bridge this taste gap for consumers, and we do this with cutting-edge AI technology. You will hear more about this later. Striking design. I'm a bit biased, I know, but this is the most beautiful lineup in terms of attention to details and design that we have ever launched. And finally, responsible living. This is the most sustainable kitchen we have ever launched, making it possible for consumers to save up to 30% of energy.
As you can hear, we are very proud of this full solution kitchen, and it has taken some time to develop this. We have worked for close to five years on this innovation, and we believe it is truly game-changing for consumers. I want to close with saying this is truly a kitchen for the future, available here today. Thank you, and now I would like to introduce one person in my team that has been instrumental for the development of this full line of kitchen range. It is the SVP, Head of Taste for Europe and Asia, Christopher Duncan.
Hi, Anna.
Hi, Christopher. You've been instrumental, as I said, to develop this full lineup, and we call it our best ever.
Absolutely.
What does this moment mean to you?
Anna, it's a very, very proud moment. It has been quite a journey to come to this very point. You see, it's always very special to develop a complete new kitchen design. What's unique with this range, it is that it is born digital. I will talk more about that and one of the coolest innovation we're launching later on. In a few minutes, Thomas Gardner, who led the design from day one, will talk to us about the deeper insights behind the design philosophy of this beautiful kitchen. As I'm standing here representing so many colleagues, I really want to emphasize this was a true collaborative effort. Innovation strikes me as being such a cross-functional process. To you back home, and all around the globe, huge kudos. Thank you. I'm so excited to launch this now.
So let's not wait anymore. Let's now unveil our best ever kitchen range to the world. Are you ready, Christopher?
I can't be more ready. Let's make it happen.
Thank you.
Wow! What a fantastic performance, and what a great reveal. Designing a new range of appliances inevitably brings challenges, but with a guiding principle, it's easy to check if we're on the right path by asking ourselves, "What is best for the user?" This is who we innovate and design for. Which is why it brings me so much pleasure and pride to be standing here today showing off the latest AEG range, the best we ever made. My name is Thomas Gardner. I work in the design department, and it has been my privilege to lead this project from inception to reality here today at IFA. So rewinding the tape a few years back, you might ask, "How do we begin?" It's a common misconception that design is only about styling and visual cues. Sure, that is part of it, but it's mainly about understanding humans.
What makes us happy, what causes us pain, and what makes our lives easier? We spent a great amount of time talking to our consumers about what their ideal cooking experience will be like, their idea of the perfect kitchen space, and how it would reflect on their sense of style and their skills in the kitchen. We saw how the kitchen becomes an extension of the person, the place to cook together, socialize, and host the perfect party. We looked at kitchen trends, but also at the furniture industry and how technology has become embedded into our lives, and the rise of the domestic chef, always looking for that next challenge to level up their cooking. Then comes the fun part. We take everything that we've learned, and we put it and turn it into these products that you see here behind me today.
The approach that we've taken is what we call a subtractive approach, where instead of adorning the products with extra pieces of trims and decoration, we instead choose to work with the materials that we need to construct the product in order to create the visual identity. Let me show you here. That matte surface of the glass, that's not achieved by adding a coating that can get damaged or scratched off. It's actually the glass itself that has been etched into a bath of acid. And the asymmetrically placed AEG logo, that's just the absence of that etching. The signature line along the bottom of the control panel, that's achieved by machining and then polishing the glass at a slight angle, much like the crystals in a chandelier.
The glass is slightly tinted for that dead smoky effect, and we even polish the edges for that perfect attention to detail. The result is a design that is refreshingly somber and which exudes a premium confidence through its understated presence. But it does not stop there, of course. How the products look and feel are a very big part of the experience, yet we have not yet talked about the most important question: What are they like to cook with? Whether you're frying an egg, baking a baguette, or treating yourself to a double espresso, the experience you go through will be very familiar since they will all have been done through our interconnected ecosystem of interfaces, known commonly as CookSmart Touch. Backed up by the power of a fully synchronized app experience, the foundation of this new ecosystem of interfaces was based in a very simple question.
Now that appliances are getting smart, are we really cooking in the smartest way we can? Connected high-resolution screens are meaningless if we don't explore the full potential that they offer us. So we set upon another journey, asking ourselves, "How can technology help us cook better, more efficiently, and more enjoyably in the future?" Thousands of hours were spent talking to consumers, mapping opportunities, and exploring potential solutions. The result is what I have here in front of you today, CookSmart Touch, an ecosystem of interfaces based on the guiding principles of intuitive, sustainable, and personalized. Intuitive, meaning that everything is exactly where you expect it and when you expect it. Sustainable, helping the user conserve energy by making smart choices, like boiling that pasta water with the lid on or switching off the heating elements in the oven for the last few minutes of a cooking process.
Personalized, creating that dynamic experience that adapts to your needs and grows together with you, making each experience just that little bit better than the last. These guiding principles are the foundation of our new cooking experience. Here today to show you exactly what that looks like, I welcome you back on stage, Christopher.
So why is the new AEG kitchen range a real game changer? Why do we say it's our best range ever? Let me show. And first, I would like to demonstrate how we have used leading-edge AI technology to address a major consumer insight. This is an absolute world premiere, and we call this AI Taste Assist. AI Taste Assist allows consumers to turn online recipes into optimized settings for their oven, thanks to artificial intelligence. You see, the key insight here is that 80% of consumers go online for recipes. This is a major source of inspiration for them, so that means this is where we have to be. However, when they go and they follow these recipes, they get these very traditional programs that have to work on any oven on the market: top, bottom, heat, 180 degrees. You know better.
So the consumers are faced to a taste gap, we call it a taste gap, between the online recipes and the very traditional programs, and the modern capabilities of their oven that they have just acquired. With AI Taste Assist, we're not automatically translating the recipes into the settings for the oven, but we are optimizing the settings to deliver tastier and healthier results, for example, by adding steam, and you might say, "What do you mean by AI?" Well, we're using deep learning language model. Now, enough words, let's do a small demo. If I can get the app up on the screen. Now, you should be able to look at the connectivity app from AEG. Very simple: program, temperature, your favorites, and what I would like to attempt is to bring a recipe from Chefkoch.de about a lasagna.
I'm just going to scroll down, down below the app. I'm just waiting for the recording to start. Okay, good. This is just showing you the program, the temperature, to give you a feel. Then when I scroll down, down the app, I will find this area called Import Cooking Settings. Okay, let's do this. Of course, for consumers, we explain a little bit what this means. What I do next is I share the recipe with AI Taste Assist, and what the module will do is it will read the recipe, it will scan the recipe, and import the settings. As you see, as the first step, it will just bring you that bottom heat, 190 degrees, which is in the recipe.
So you could continue without optimization, but I'm really interested to get the best out of my oven, so I'm going to optimize. And when I optimize, the connection between my oven and the settings is being done. And since I have a steam oven, AI Taste Assist recommends me a low steam, 170 degrees Celsius. This will give me much tastier and healthier results because steam retains the flavors and the nutrients. So now I go on, it's in my settings, and I can get this really juicy inside and crispy outside lasagna that I was after. You're getting hungry, yeah. So then you might say, "Oh, can we repeat this easily?" Yes, of course.
Just have to click on the Favorite button, save it, rename it, and call it Christopher's Lasagna, and then it's available on your favorites, on the app, and also on the oven UI, just one click away. So you see, with AI Taste Assist, we are addressing that taste gap that consumers are facing, and many more consumers will enjoy tastier and healthier recipes in the end. Now I talk about our second pillar for AEG Zukunft, and this is, of course, always about sustainability. We all share a strong sense of urgency here. We have a key role to play to secure a better future, and since 85% of the carbon footprint is generated during the product usage phase, of course, we dedicated more, more effort to the energy consumption.
So not only we have upgraded all our EcoLine ranges to the best-in-class energy efficiency, we have also added eco-guided, eco guidance tips that help the consumers to save energy and money. In fact, when they follow the tips, they are able to save up to 50% energy on our hoods, and on average, 30% across all appliances. I would like to share with you two of my personal favorites. First, on the oven. Our engineers have developed cooking cycles that make use of the residual heat in the cavity of the oven, and this helps us to save up to 20% energy for them. And of course, as you can see, we show this in the UI, because consumers care. Second, on the hobs, we are now extending our sense range, and I love the SenseBoil product.
We have added vibration sensors in the hob to detect when the water is boiling. Did you know that 20 seconds of overboiling is the same as charging your full smartphone? Quite interesting, no? So we can help the consumers to save energy, and here also, we save up to 33%, thanks to avoiding overboiling and giving them tips like, "Keep the lid on your pot." This effort, I can tell you, will continue for a long time. Now, I go to the third chapter. What a better way to illustrate striking design than to demonstrate our SaphirMatt hobs with anti-scratch surface. I would say award-winning. Award-winning, yeah, because this is. We are very, very proud about this. We launched this world premiere last year, and this resonated here in IFA with the consumers, with the trade. We're now extending this range. We have it on induction hobs.
We have it on extractor hobs. We have it on 80, we have it on 60, and we're moving very fast because we have understood consumers love this. They give us a consumer star rating of 4.90. They're just they just love this. And it was a very proud moment when we received the iF Best of the Best Award, a very prestigious award. So now I'm going to move to the right, the kitchen on your right, and I will meet Teresa, because I think it's always better to demonstrate things. So, hi, Teresa.
Hi, Christopher. Yeah-
What do you say?
Come on over. So this is a SaphirMat, the award-winning induction hob from AEG. It is designed and produced in Germany, and can be distinguished, as we already heard, by its unique surface structure. What makes it unique is, as we already heard, this hob is not coated, unlike conventional hobs, but here, the glass surface itself has been modified. As a result, we have three highly practical features. First one, the SaphirMatt is resistant to fingerprints, meaning if you touch the surface with dry fingers, you will leave no traces behind, and even if your hands are a bit wet and you touch it, the prints will disappear within a few moments. Second, the SaphirMatt is four times more scratch-resistant compared to conventional hobs. Let's imagine you spill some salt, pepper, or in our case, sugar corns, on the surface by cooking.
Normally, you would have to be very careful not to move over them with your cooking instrument, because otherwise you would scratch the surface. With the SaphirMatt, you don't have to worry about that anymore. Show them, Christopher.
You trust me, yeah?
I trust you.
Okay.
Come on. That's all you have. Ah! Beautiful. Let's see if you could leave your mark. Do you see any scratches?
Neat. Neat. Wonderful. I'm always amazed by this product.
It is beautiful, yes. So let's take a look at our pan, because as we just saw, we have no scratches in the hob, but we can see where the sugar caramel left their impact on our pan, right here on the outside, right?
This is a real destructive process. Very, very hard.
It is.
Okay.
Yeah.
You made your point.
Third, the SaphirMatt is twice as fast to clean as conventional hobs. This is actually my personal favorite feature, because even butter can be simply wiped off with a wet towel, no cleaning products needed. By just wiping it once, maybe dry over it, you will have a clean surface without any smudges again.
Amazing. Well, thanks, Therese. It's a very powerful demonstration.
Thank you.
So we're going to make many, many more consumers happy with this. So to conclude, we talked about redefining assisted cooking through leading-edge AI technology. We talked about bringing this strong sustainability package, 'cause we're so committed, and we talked about creating a wow effect through striking design to bring you your dream kitchen, the AEG kitchen range. But that's not all for today. We have many more innovations we would like to talk to you about that we will uncover today. So please welcome on stage the VP of Germany and Austria, Michael Geisler.
... First of all, thanks so much, Christopher, and also Thomas, to you and also your teams for this great hard work. As you mentioned, you worked for five years on that, what we just see live here at IFA. I fully share your excitement, and believe it or not, the oven with the CookSmart Touch and the AI Taste Assist, it's definitely already on my wish list. So many great things we have seen so far, right? It's with great pride to showcase all these innovations with you today, here in Berlin and via live stream around the world. On top, we will also have our German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, visiting our booth as part of the official IFA opening tour, which is a big honor for us. As Anna mentioned, we have a strong legacy in pioneering innovations in laundry care.
By the way, it's not just us who think so. External awards continue to confirm our strong performance. I think most of you are familiar with Stiftung Warentest, also called STiWA, the esteemed German consumer magazine, known for its independent and also rigid product testing. Most notably, AEG became the first brand in over a decade to dominate all three categories of the highly competitive STiWA laundry test, which is testing washing machines, washer-dryer, and tumble dryers. It is with great pride that we present to you here at IFA this year, our latest STiWA champions: the 6000 Series Pro Washer, our 9000 Series AbsoluteCare Washer-Dryer, and the 8000 Series AbsoluteCare Tumble Dryer. We didn't stop there. Just last week, we set another record in the latest STiWA tumble dryer test with our model from the 9000 Series Dryer range.
I think the STiWA verdict speaks for itself. "Excellent in all tested programs. A first in any tumble dryer test. Whether it's easy-care shirts or a full load of bed linens and towels, with the tested model, AEG has set a new gold standard for tumble dryers. It delivers perfectly dry laundry in a relatively short time with low energy consumption." What a great feedback, isn't it? It's really creating goosebumps, maybe you can imagine or understand this, because in fact, AEG is the very first and only brand to bring home four STiWA test winners in laundry care in just one year. One AEG experience area is still missing from this presentation: our wellbeing highlights, especially in floor care, where we also have a strong expertise.
Did you know that we invented this category back in 2004, exactly twenty years ago, with Ergorapido as the first cordless vacuum cleaner? This year, we are launching a complete new range of effortless, easy-to-use cordless cleaner, and we also come with a great innovation, the first of its kind in our range. Let me highlight two key innovations. One is the new automatic emptying station for the AEG 8000 cordless cleaner. This system is designed to prevent any contact with dust, making cleaning much more hygienic and effortless. Just look how it works. Simply dock the cleaner, and it automatically empties into a sealed two-liter S-Bag, ensuring a mess-free experience. An LED display will notify you when the dust bag needs to be changed, which usually is only needed every few months, like you know it from a classical corded vacuum cleaner, right?
AEG is the first German brand to bring this innovation to the market. Completing the range is the AEG three-in-one 8000 wet and dry cleaner. Here, you experience powerful wet and dry hard floor cleaning, efficient vacuuming, and easy hand unit cleaning, all in just one unit. Unlike standard wet and dry vacuums, the new AEG 8000 wet and dry cleaner is slim and flexible, effortlessly cleaning under couches, beds, as well as in corners. With that, I don't think there is anything more to say, but a big thank you for joining us today, both here in Berlin, as well as via live stream from around the world. We are now looking forward to showing you here our exciting innovations on our fantastic booths. Let's enjoy some delicious snacks while you explore our new kitchen range and the other highlights.
And of course, all speakers will be on hand to answer your questions. So see you around, and have a great afternoon!