13857: Early Check-Out At Airbnb.

Campaign reported Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall is checking out of the company to start his own consultancy. No word if Mildenhall will continue to “consult” on the dearth of diversity in the advertising industry.

Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall departs

By Diana Bradley

Mildenhall will continue to work with Airbnb on a consulting basis.

Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall is departing the company after three years to launch a marketing consulting firm called 21st Century Brand, according to media reports.

Mildenhall’s last day at Airbnb will be October 20.

He decided to start the firm after high-profile startups and venture capital firms came to him for marketing advice, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper said Airbnb is seeking a new CMO and Mildenhall is continuing to work with the company on a consulting basis.

In an emailed statement, Mildenhall noted that since he joined Airbnb, the company has created a “beloved, mission-driven brand that has helped create phenomenal value. Belong Anywhere has become meaningful for our community all over the world.”

He added that Airbnb’s “impact” has inspired him to take what he has learned and work with other founders to get people to “care deeply about their brands.”

“This is why I’ve decided to leave Airbnb to set up my own brand consultancy,” said Mildenhall.

Mildenhall joined Airbnb in June 2014. Previously, he worked at Coca-Cola for seven years in various roles, most recently as SVP of integrated marketing communication and design excellence. He was also responsible for leading the creative vision for Coke’s portfolio of brands.

“I’m happy that [Mildenhall] has found his passion, and his next chapter will be exciting to watch,” Brian Chesky, Airbnb cofounder, CEO, and head of community, said in an emailed statement.

13695: Hot Air From Airbnb.

Campaign reported Airbnb is advocating for diversity by openly recruiting women and racial and ethnic minorities during Cannes. Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall tweeted, “The most diverse brand needs the most diverse creative team.” Okay, but Airbnb calling itself “the most diverse brand” in light of its own recent history is like WPP labeling itself as “perhaps the most diverse example of diversity of any single organization.” Regardless, it’s sad to see Mildenhall go from acknowledging that White women have leapfrogged over racial and ethnic minorities in diversity discussions to ultimately taking an HP diverted diversity approach. Campaign was quick to point out Airbnb’s dismal diversity figures—although it’s just the exclusive trade publication playing pot calling the kettle non-Black. Adding Cannes to the equation makes the entire mess perhaps the most diverse example of diversity hypocrisy of any single scenario.

Are you a woman or non-white creative? Airbnb wants to meet you at Cannes

By Ilyse Liffreing

The brand is on a mission to expand the diversity of its creative team.

On Monday, Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall called upon women and creatives of color to send in their most “stellar work” for a chance to meet up at the Cannes Lions festival in June.

“The most diverse brand needs the most diverse creative team,” Mildenhall tweeted on Monday with the hashtag #CannesDoDiversity. Mildenhall includes a link to Airbnb’s diversity micro-site, which now includes a special section that prompts those interested to email creative@airbnb.com to connect.

Cannes has long been a place for agencies to recruit new creatives, and for creatives to advance their careers. Traditionally, the recruiting has taken place quietly to avoid upsetting current employers or quasi-friendly competitors.

But Airbnb has been on a mission of late to diversify its creative team, and the company doesn’t seem inclined to be quiet or patient about it.

“The industry has been talking about the need for diversity for as long as I’ve been in it,” said Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall in a press release promoting the Cannes recruitment effort. “It is now time for us all to stop talking, and start on-boarding opportunities for these vastly underrepresented creators. And I, for one, will do everything within my power to ensure we do so.”

The message on the Airbnb careers site makes it clear that qualifying creatives don’t need to be in France for an opportunity to join the team. “And if you’re not going to Cannes, we should still talk,” it says. Airbnb did not immediately return calls inquiring which positions it was hoping to fill or how many candidates it was hoping to meet.

Armed with its “Belong Anywhere” slogan, Airbnb—part travel agency, part home-sharing platform—has already done much to nurture inclusivity among its members. Most recently, the brand promoted a movement around marriage equality by giving out free “acceptance rings”: incomplete black wedding rings meant to symbolize the gap in marriage equality in Australia. The campaign received 98 percent positive sentiment, and rings were ordered at a rate of over one a minute, according to the company.

And in February, after opposing Donald Trump’s ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, the brand launched its #WeAccept campaign with a Super Bowl commercial that promised housing for 100,000 people in need, beginning with refugees, over the next five years.

Mildenhall has also been an outspoken advocate for including more ethnic judges at Cannes. This year, the former Coca-Cola and Mother executive will be chair of the Creative Effectiveness jury.

Although Airbnb has built its brand around diversity, the company is currently facing its own deficit. The brand posts the gender and ethnic makeup of its employees online, and in 2016, about 43 percent of employees were female, a number that shrunk to 30 percent among the company’s leadership. When it comes to multiple ethnicities, the representation is even worse.

13609: Airbnb Honcho Airs Grievances.

Campaign reported Airbnb Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Mildenhall continued publicly questioning the dearth of non-Whites at Cannes, tweeting about the lack of color among speakers slated to pontificate at the exclusive event. A Cannes Lions spokeswoman replied, “Diversity is a priority across the entire Festival. Cannes Lions is a global event and people from all around the world attend, enter, judge, work and speak at it. … When organisations apply to speak on one of our stages, we actively encourage them to embrace diversity when considering individuals to put forward.” Well, diverted diversity is clearly a priority, given all the attention, action and awards addressing the promotion of White women. But to say, “Diversity is a priority across the entire Festival,” could be categorized as a scam statement. Meanwhile, Mildenhall ought to directly discuss diversity with Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy, as the old man’s office is now available via Airbnb. Any conversation would clearly show Mildenhall the cultural cluelessness at the highest levels of the industry.

Airbnb’s Mildenhall hit outs at Cannes Lions again over lack of ‘brown faces’ among speakers

Jonathan Mildenhall, the chief marketing officer at Airbnb, has hit out again at Cannes Lions organisers for “only three brown faces” being among this year’s speakers.

By Omar Oakes

Yesterday Mildenhall said it was “not cool” for the organisers of this year’s International Festival of Creativity to include only three non-white people among the 102 speakers it had lined up this year.

He tweeted: “I’m confused are we a GLOBAL festival of creativity?”.

The chief marketer also posted a link to the Cannes Lions website, which advertises 102 confirmed speakers at this year’s festival. Mildenhall did not specify who among them were the “brown faces”.

This year’s speakers include leading industry names such as: WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell; Procter & Gamble chief brand officer Marc Pritchard; and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Non-industry figures include Russian protest pop-group Pussy Riot and movie director Jason Reitman.

Mildenhall’s diversity-conscious reproach follows a series of complaints he made on social media in January about the festival’s first 16 jury presidents containing no “dark-skinned” people. Two of these jurors were of Southeast Asian-Chinese descent (Ogilvy’s Tham Khai Meng and Dentsu’s Ted Lim).

Last month, Mildenhall was named president of this year’s creative effectiveness Lions jury at Cannes. He said at the time that, while marketing industry is becoming “more inclusive”, it still has work to do. Mildenhall added: “diversity informs everything I’m part of and I want to accelerate that change further.”

A Cannes Lions spokeswoman said: “Diversity is a priority across the entire Festival. Cannes Lions is a global event and people from all around the world attend, enter, judge, work and speak at it.

“When organisations apply to speak on one of our stages, we actively encourage them to embrace diversity when considering individuals to put forward.”

13578: TBWA\BHM.

TBWA produced a short film focusing on what it’s like to be Black in advertising for Black History Month. And Adweek reported on the initiative on March 1, the day after Black History Month. Brilliant and bravo, Adweek.

This Short Film From TBWA Explores What It’s Like Being Black in Advertising

A special edition of the agency’s Backslash series

By Patrick Coffee

Conversations about diversity in the ad industry have never been more prevalent. Over the past year alone, clients like General Mills, Verizon, HP and Airbnb have called for more women and people of color not only within agencies themselves but on the panels that give them awards every summer at a certain seaside resort in Southern France.

Several agencies also created projects for Black History Month, like Havas Chicago’s #BlackAtWork “jobstacle course.” Last week, TBWA’s internal media unit Backslash offered its own take on the singular experiences of black professionals working in the ad industry.

[The short film] features staffers from both inside and outside the Omnicom network … along with one big-name CMO.

Backslash launched last August as a way for TBWA\Chiat\Day to share topical materials with its staffers via both in-house videos like this one and a public-facing Instagram account.

TBWA Worldwide chief strategy officer Nick Barham described the project as “an internal inspiration” designed to reach all 13,000 employees around the world and share new points of view on marketing, brands and larger cultural concerns.

“We felt that, for Black History Month, it was important to think about African American culture as it relates to advertising,” Barham said of this project, noting that TBWA leaders in New York and Los Angeles have discussed the topic frequently.

“We wanted to capture the broad spectrum of people in advertising,” said Backslash content director Chay Lee, who joined the agency in L.A. last summer after working in production roles at Fox, Univision and other media companies. “There are conversations that people of color in advertising have when they’re by themselves, and I wanted people to hear that.”

The film went out to the global network last week, and TBWA\Chiat\Day subsequently held a viewing in its West Coast office along with a panel featuring individuals associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I don’t think change is happening as quickly as it should,” Barham said, and Mildenhall has argued multiple times that agencies can’t simply wait for their teams to grow more diverse. “Change comes from people having conversations,” Lee added. “Once you’re on the radar, anything can happen.”

Until now, the Backslash project has been primarily limited to its Instagram account and internal materials like this video. But both leaders said the team has grown more ambitious over the past few months, and they expect to create more publicly disseminated content in the future.

When asked about the project’s goals, Barham said, “We want to represent what people are listening to, what they’re interested in and what brands care about.”