If you are a 17-year-old snowboarder in Tahoe, Red Bull is an entertainment company that happens to make a soft drink. When asked a couple of years ago why it did not enter the Cannes Lions, the company’s answer was: "Wrong Cannes." It is not thinking in terms of marketing, it is thinking in terms of entertainment. Felix Baumgartner Space Jump World Record 2012Īnd then there is Red Bull. There is nothing wrong with them as a brand-building mechanism but they are media buys with another third-party owner, not entertainment. It is calling media-buy deals with Vice "branded entertainment platforms". It lacks confidence, understanding and talent from the other side. As someone who has spent a good while working at the intersection of both industries, I have realised why: the brand world is still only half in. The field is conspicuously sparse of true commercial and critical successes: Shane Meadows’ award-winning Somers Town (funded by Eurostar), the blockbusting Lego Movie… the examples of brands creating what people in the entertainment world would call "entertainment" are still rare. We have been talking about brands and entertainment for well over a decade. Whether or not the collab pans out in the long run will be something to revisit at a later date.Know your brand and stand by its ethos, be relevant and authentic" Werner Brell Red Bull Media House North America The company’s hoping Jony Ive will be an ace in the hole of sorts to lead it into a successful IPO (and beyond). Airbnb has struggled with staff turnover, sources said, and executives have reinstituted bonus plans as a morale-boosting method.Īirbnb doesn’t want a year of stress to affect its long-term prospects - that, at least, we can relate to. According to people close to Airbnb, laying off of a quarter of the company’s staff in May sent ripples of discomfort through the company’s remaining ranks. Most of the company’s executive team has joined the company in the last two years, while two top executive positions remain unfilled. The pandemic has led to a number of high-level employees walking out - even Greg Greeley, the company’s former head of homes, left in July. Internal turmoil - It isn’t just the head of design who’s left Airbnb recently. Chesky is a long-time admirer of Apple’s design work, and he’s been dropping hints to employees for months that he might try to appoint Ive to the new role. Ive wrote the entry for Chesky in Time’s 100 most influential people of 2015 list and they also worked together on Airbnb’s logo redesign in 2014. What’s he going to design, a vacation-themed MP3 player?īut Chesky and Ive have been friendly for years, as The Information points out. Nonetheless, it’s difficult to see Ive’s appointment as anything but an attempt to revitalize Airbnb ahead of its listing as the company faces the fallout of an incredibly tumultuous year.īuddy buddy - The jump from pivotal Apple designer to Airbnb employee is a strange one to be sure. Airbnb filed plans for an initial public offering on August 19 and has been privately valued at $31 billion.
But the company - and its investors - still believe in its potential for longevity. Airbnb says it will still be seeking to fill Schleifer's now vacant role separately.Īirbnb has had a predictably difficult time weathering the pandemic - the company laid off almost 2,000 of its 7,500 employees in May, and has faced backlash for being used for host quarantine-flouting parties. Schleifer has been running the design side of Airbnb since 2015.
Ive will be stepping in just as Airbnb’s chief design officer, Alex Schleifer, leaves the company. The short-term rental company has hired Ive as a creative consultant, according to a report from The Information.ĬEO Brian Chesky confirmed Ive’s appointment on Wednesday and said it would be “a multi-year relationship to design the next generation of Airbnb products and services.” Ive is actually the second ex-Apple executive to join Airbnb in recent years: Hiroki Asai, a former Apple VP, joined as Airbnb’s head of marketing in July. Jony Ive, the famed Apple designer who worked on key products like the original iPod, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, is joining Airbnb.
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