Molly Innes

Having built its marketing strategy around brand building since 2021, Airbnb is moving into new categories in a bid to become a hub for experiences, not just overnight stays. Source: Airbnb, Ryan Lowry Airbnb's journey to become a business built on brand marketing is well documented. The firm stopped putting most of its marketing spend into performance channels in favour of brand building in 2021 and has since reaped the rewards. At a flagship event in Los Angeles yesterday (1 May), Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky laid out what's next for the brand: experiences. The travel firm has launched a product enhancement allowing users to collaborate closely with friends and family when booking trips on the app, alongside an experiential push with Icons. The new Icons product is an extension of what Airbnb has been doing from an experience perspective in recent years. Last summer, it added the Barbie Dreamhouse to its listings, allowing fans to enter a ballot to win a free overnight stay in collaboration with the Margot Robbie-fronted film. Now, anyone can enter to win experiences in the floating house from Disney Pixar's 2009 film ‘Up', an intimate gig with comedian Kevin Hart and access to the house from Prince's Purple Rain video, to name just three of the 11 initial custom built Airbnb Icons. Indeed, the brand has even turned Paris's Musée d'Orsay into an Airbnb for someone to stay in during this summer's Olympic Opening Ceremony. These large scale stunts were a decade in the making, says Chesky, and represent the direction Airbnb is moving towards for the future. New north star The Musée d'Orsay is becoming an Airbnb ‘Icon'. Source: Airbnb, Frederik Vercruysse Airbnb will be hosting Icons “on a regular basis”, the firm's global head of marketing Hiroki Asai tells Marketing Week at the event in LA. “As culture changes and things happen, we can invite different Icons onto the platform, so we can be top of mind a lot more during the year,” he explains. “It's really pointing us in a direction of where the future of Airbnb [is]. Where it's something more than just stays.” Icons is a big budget affair, with Asai measuring its success in terms of awareness and traffic. He explains previous experiences like the Barbie DreamHouse led to 4.7 million page views for the brand “without any marketing, without living on the homepage at all.” “We're pretty confident that this is going to reach whole new audiences,” he says. Included in the list of Icons is an overnight stay at the house of Bollywood star Janhvi Kapoor in Chennai, India. A “really important market” for Airbnb, India is recording growth of 30% year-on-year. “The most important thing for us right now is migrating people to imagining Airbnb being, but stays and experiences as well,” adds Asai. “Icons are clearly these unbelievable experiences that we're using as the North Star for what the platform could be.” Marketing Week will be taking a deeper dive into Airbnb's marketing strategy and growth plans in an upcoming feature with global head of marketing Hiroki Asai and vice-president for global marketing, Nancy King. Recommended Airbnb is attracting new customers by using its advertising to “educate” rather than drive sales, says CEO Brian Chesky. Airbnb's strong brand, built through a focus on top-of-funnel activity, means the business is able to keep its marketing spend as a percentage of revenue at the same level year after year, says CEO Brian Chesky. After posting its first ever quarterly profit, Airbnb says it's pleased with the payoff from its marketing spend in the last year with an improved ROI. When the whole country is your customer, delivering customer experience is a complex equation. Here, CX50 members from the public sector reveal their approach. In a world where less is more, checking insights, aligning KPIs and adopting a mend and repair mindset can make your marketing investment work harder. As marketers become disillusioned with prolonged job interview processes, as stages and demands increase, what impact is this having on the industry? The financial services firm is bolstering its brand marketing capabilities with the creation of a new role dedicated to growing its “market visibility”. Search anything and hit ‘Enter' If you consent, we and our partners can store and access personal information on your device to provide a more personalised browsing experience. 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Since rebalancing its marketing mix to focus on brand building, Airbnb has reaped the rewards, though top marketer Hiroki Asai says its model will not work for all brands.

Despite increasing marketing spend in Q1, Airbnb is considering a potential tightening of activity to “drive growth” as it looks to become “more aspirational”.

The ad, which Apple has now apologised for, had a “less negative than you might expect” reaction from consumers, claims System1. However, it still falls short.

As CMOs come under pressure to do more with less, marketing budgets as a percent of company revenue have dropped to 7.7%.

Burberry is shifting focus towards brand building over performance, as its CEO admits there is “more work to be done” on turnaround.

New data from the Women's Sport Trust shows more people watched women's sport in the first four months of 2024 than ever before. UK TV viewership of women's sport continues to break records, with 20.9 million people watching three minutes or more of coverage in the first four months of 2024. This is up on the previous high seen in 2023 of 20.6 million, according to the latest data from Women's Sport Trust and Futures Sport & Entertainment. Higher viewing figures were supported by increased coverage across both paid-for broadcasters including Sky Sports and TNT Sports, and free channels like BBC One and ITV. A third of these viewers (6.8 million) are new to women's sport, with fresh viewership being driven by free-to-view channels airing more football and rugby. Football is regarded as the leading force in women's sport, but growth in rugby is also paying off. Some 1.3 million people tuned in to see the Guinness Women's Six Nations title decider in April, with a peak audience of 1.9 million on BBC One. T he Six Nations hit a new record, with 8.1 million people tuning into coverage for at least three minutes. The Barclays Women's Super League witnessed a 10% rise in viewing hours in the four months to 30 April, reaching 31.6 million hours. For the FA Cup, the average audience for the rounds was 537,000, up from 2023's average of 489,000. Despite this positive growth, Women's Sport Trust CEO Tammy Parlour cautions that increased momentum is not guaranteed. “It's been another strong start to the year for women's sport. However, it is not a given that this will continue, particularly with the Lionesses not competing in a major women's football tournament this year,” she says, adding that women's sport is still in the “test-and-learn” phase. Brands need to activate their properties effectively, build on the storytelling around women's sport and continue to create emotional connections with fans. Tammy Parlour, Women's Sport Trust How can brands and broadcasters make sure women's sport continues to grow in periods without big tournaments for the Lionesses? According to Parlour, there needs to be “impactful media coverage throughout the whole year”. “Brands need to activate their properties effectively, build on the storytelling around women's sport and continue to create emotional connections with fans,” she says. “For broadcasters it's important to continue to work on discoverability of all types of women's sports content.” This echoes the sentiment of Jess Carter, Chelsea and England footballer, who told the Festival of Marketing audience “women's football isn't just when we have a tournament.” “It's every Sunday, every Wednesday – and [we're] trying to raise the profile of that. I don't play just to wait for England camp,” she said. Recommended The latest research from Women's Sport Trust shows 46.7 million people watched women's sport on linear TV last year. Brands and broadcasters should be developing fan bases more to transform attention into revenue for women's sport. Adobe is the latest brand to tap into the opportunity of women's sport, as the FA announces it will sponsor the Adobe Women's FA Cup until at least 2026. The soft drinks business hailed an “outstanding” first half of the year, which saw it return to volume growth as marketing spend ramped up. Burberry is shifting focus towards brand building over performance, as its CEO admits there is “more work to be done” on turnaround. Describing the creation of the CMO role as a “significant milestone”, the entertainment giant has tasked Inglis with “redefining” the brand globally. Instead of seeing redundancy as a blow to their self-worth, marketers are reclaiming their careers and finding new avenues to thrive.

With a big summer of sport on the horizon, marketers looking to make gains should consider the ‘emotional value' of building brands via partnerships, says Lisa Walker, head of media and sponsorship at Vodafone. Sports sponsorship isn't cheap, but the opportunity for brands to make both long-term and short-term gains by partnering with institutions in the sports space is continuing to grow, with a flagship summer of sport on the horizon with UEFA Euro 2024 and the Paris Olympics. However, proving the effectiveness of such an investment isn't always straightforward. “There's a lot to monitor,” said Adam Warner, head of global sports and partnerships at PepsiCo, which has various different sponsorships in play for its Pepsi and Lays brands, including the men's and women's Champions Leagues. At its core, partnerships are set up in the hope of driving penetration, he said, though it differs from brand to brand. “You've got to do it to the service of the brand,” Warner added, speaking today (16 May) at Advertising Week Europe, meaning PepsiCo brands need to show up in a “very brand-centric way”. He describes it as a “critical need” to be distinctive when sponsoring sports. Investing heavily in sponsorship can impact other areas of the business, though, given the level of investment it requires. Lisa Walker, head of media and sponsorship at Vodafone, said “no secret budget” exists for sponsorship. It's not an added extra or separate to the overall marketing spend. “If we spend more on sponsorship, we spend less on advertising,” she said. “That's how it works.” Sponsorship sits alongside advertising at Vodafone, “to give comparable results” across both, she added, such as brand tracking. Vodafone was a big sports sponsor in the 1990s and noughties, before having to pull back from the channel as the “competitive set was changing” and money was tighter. This included breaking its deal as Manchester United's shirt sponsor two years early in 2005 – a deal worth £36m. “The reality is Vodafone had to pull out of those partnerships and probably didn't want to,” said Warner on the disinvesting, which led to a “hole” in the marketing strategy. “We know from all of our brand tracking, going back over the last 10-15 years, sponsorship really does almost over-index in helping define your brand and give it emotional value and personality.” It was clear to Warner that Vodafone had lost the essence of its brand emotional value and personality in the absence of sponsorship: “I just needed to bide my time to the point where we felt, yes, financially we can justify this.” Justifying investment British Gas turned off its sponsorship channels for a decade until 2021, with Andy Freeman, marketing director at the energy giant pointing out that “everyone's acutely aware of the last couple of years” with the energy crisis and “consumer crisis”. With a brand history of 200 years, he is looking at how British Gas can create “meaning and difference” in a “complex” category. Freeman joined British Gas from Santander, where sponsorship is common across the organisation. This means when joining British Gas in 2019, it was something he “wanted to do”. This led British Gas to partner with Team GB in late 2023 ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics in a five-year deal. “It was really about finding the right time and right properties with sports in terms of national institutions,” said Freeman, who says British Gas wouldn't tie itself to one regional team. “If you look at Team GB and Paralympic Team GB, there's an incredible amount of trust and we're looking to leverage that trust to build meaning and difference in our brand.” At PepsiCo, sports sponsorship is “pretty hardwired” into the business, said Warner. The business models itself on relevance and tapping into passion points as well as reach and returns – “the three Rs”. “These are the three reasons we're in it, we invest heavily and we will continue to do so if we can maintain the discipline,” he added. Offering his advice to any marketers and brands wanting to build sponsorship into the marketing mix, Warner said “you need strategic clarity”. “Don't rush it, these partnerships are long-term, right? You don't want to be winding yourself out of it in a year or two when you realise you didn't have the strategic clarity and didn't have the right long-term investment,” he urged marketers. Recommended EA Sports' top marketer on what goes into rebranding a product with 30 years of heritage – and how utilising strong partnerships and data brought it to life. Sky Sports' viewing figures for the WSL grew 45% last season, and it is keen to capitalise on this by making its biggest investment behind the league to date. PepsiCo's CMO of international foods, Mustafa Shamseldin is building a team of marketers from outside FMCG and non marketers, claiming a lack of experience in marketing is not a barrier to becoming a great marketer if they have a “deep desire to understand humans”. Asda has revealed a new brand identity alongside a summer campaign highlighting the retailer's commitment to price and quality. Expanding into new categories has been a source of growth for Premier Foods, while “sharper” promotional price points are supporting its return to volume growth. In a critically important industry, brands must balance innovation and sector expertise to offer an exemplary customer experience. Volkswagen's new brand platform looks to remind customers of the love they have for the brand, while also positioning the car giant for the future.