He joins
Airbnb at a time when it's ramping up its marketing and its global
footprint. Under Ms. Curtis-McIntyre's leadership, the San
Francisco-based company tapped Pereira & O'Dell as its agency of record
last July.
Brand awareness has become more of an imperative
for the company, which was founded in 2008. Prior to last year, the
company's marketing efforts had mainly been in the realm of direct
response, such as search and Facebook ads aimed at people who are
likely candidates to visit a given destination.
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Airbnb
also pushed into TV
advertising for the first time in September with a
four-and-a-half-minute short film made up of user-submitted Vines
that ran on Sundance Channel. Mullen was the agency behind that
ad.
Privately-held
Airbnb hasn't disclosed its marketing budget, but it's safe to
assume that it's at a completely different scale than Coca-Cola.
According to Kantar Media, the brand spent just $300,000 on
measured media last year. As of last October, Ms. Curtis-McIntyre
had about 20 people reporting to her in the marketing
organization. Airbnb declined to provide an update on that
number.
Coke
shakeup
The news comes on the heels of a
marketing shakeup at Coca-Cola. The company announced Wendy
Clark would take on the role of president-sparkling and strategic
marketing, Coca-Cola North America, effective June 1. Meanwhile,
Katie Bayne, who had been president-North America Brands and is the
former CMO of Coca-Cola North America, is taking on the job vacated
by Ms. Clark, senior VP-global sparkling brand center.
Ms. Clark
will need to shore up the creative ranks. In addition to Mr.
Mildenhall, top North American marketers Pio Schunker and Alison
Lewis have left in the last year.
Most
recently, Mr. Mildenhall, who was named to Ad Age's Creativity 50 in 2012, was senior VP
integrated marketing communication and design excellence for
Coca-Cola North America. Prior to that role, he had served the
company in a global marketing role since 2007. A Coca-Cola
spokesman said, "Jonathan left for professional and personal
reasons, and we wish him well in his new endeavor."
Mr. Mildenhall joined Coca-Cola from the agency
world, where he held a variety of roles at agencies in the U.K. He
served as head of strategy at Mother, in addition to account
management roles at TBWA, HHCL, DLKW Lowe and Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
Airbnb earns money by charging 6% to 12% fees on guest bookings
and 3% of what people make from renting out their homes. It raised
$450 million at a $10 billion
valuation last month. That brings the six-year-old startup's
total funding to $776.4 million, according to CrunchBase.
While Airbnb is looking to brand marketing to grow positive
awareness, it's also increasingly needing to play defense via its
public policy team as it faces regulation in big cities that could
make its service illegal. For example, in its home city of San
Francisco, there's a
ballot initiative being prepared that would limit temporary
rentals to neighborhoods with commercial zoning.
