Brands with a Purpose

Podcast with Master Marketer Jonathan Mildenhall about the Power of Purpose-Driven Brands.

Even the most hardened left-brain investor can recognize the genius of Jonathan Mildenhall. While leading the marketing organizations at Coca-Cola and Airbnb, Jonathan focused each of these brands on an authentic and emotive purpose that cut through the cynicism of modern consumerism to create connection and change human behavior based on shared values. Jonathan was kind enough to share with us his stories and experiences leading Coca-Cola and Airbnb marketing, as well as his new venture, TwentyFirstCenturyBrand.

Key takeaways from our wide-ranging conversation include:

• Energizing an icon, helping Coca-Cola reclaim and extend its emotional core
• Authenticity as an enduring and compounding competitive advantage
• How aligning brands with core human needs can change consumer behavior

For this and a lot more from one of the most creative and successful marketers of this century, settle back, listen to the podcast here or keep reading.

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Dave Yuan: Jonathan, thanks again for speaking with us today. You're such an icon in the brand world and the marketing world. It was great to have you speak at our event last summer and I'm just excited to continue that conversation. But before we get into the brand content and some of your mission, let's talk about Jonathan as a person. Tell me a little bit about your story. Where'd you grow up? Tell me about your parents.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Thank you very much for inviting me, Dave. It's a pleasure to join in this conversation and share my thoughts about how purpose-driven companies outperform their competitors. Now a little bit of background on me. I was actually born on a project in the North of England. My mom had five boys to three different men by the age of 27, and I like to say that she was very beautiful, but if a little foolish. And my two elder brothers are both white and my two younger brothers are both white and I am a mixed-race guy. My father's Nigerian, my mother's British, and so I am very clearly the black sheep of my own family. And that context, growing up in relative poverty, and being a kind of outsider in my own family, I think has really propelled my career and my position in the industry of being somebody who is very comfortable with differences, somebody who leans into, what I'd like to call, constructive provocation. And I had a fantastic career in London for 15 years in the advertising industry, and my reputation was built because I was associated with lots of good, provocative, creative work that really built brands. But after 15 years, I decided that I really wanted to be a client because clients are really the people that make all the decisions in and around advertising. And so I went off to the Harvard Business School for a summer and I did the Advanced Management Program there, and upon graduating from Harvard, I ended up emigrating to the states as I got a job at the Coca-Cola Company.

Dave Yuan: Thanks so much for sharing your background. Your childhood, I think all of our childhoods, they're just so much part of who we become and who we are, so that's great color. You’ve absolutely worked with some of the most iconic brands on the planet, and no bigger than Coca-Cola. Tell me a little about that. What was the history and the legacy that you joined and you stepped into, and what was Jonathan's contribution? What are you most proud of? How'd you foster, build, and lead that brand over time?

Jonathan Mildenhall: It was my first client job. So I'd only ever run advertising agencies before 2006, and then I get invited to join the Coca-Cola Company as global vice president of advertising and creative, and to be honest with you, Dave, it was completely, completely out of my depth for the first year. But it was really interesting because my mom actually gave me some advice, and she said, "Look, Jonathan, you don't need to find all of the answers. What you have to do is find the people who know all of the answers." And so I went around the Coca-Cola Company looking for people who'd served decades, and I found the head archivist at the Coca-Cola Company. He'd been there for 41 years. A guy called Phil Mooney. And Phil took me under his wing and basically every Wednesday for three months, I would go and sit with Phil, and he would take me through the different decades of the Coca-Cola Company. At the time, Coke had been around for something like 120 years, and the archive of the Coca-Cola Company is the world's most valuable commercial archive. It's full of original Rockwells and Warhols, and from a brand perspective, from a culture perspective, from an art perspective, it truly is an inspirational place.

I realized that Coke was so much more than just the world's most valuable brand at the time and an iconic soft drinks brand and this iconic standard-bearer of Americana all around the world. I realized that actually Coca-Cola had become all of those things because its very best marketing leaned into cultural issues and positioned Coke as a purpose-driven brand that was genuinely good for humanity because it was able to cross divides and bring polarizing opinion and thought and communities together. And so I really started to hold myself and my team accountable for reviving, not just the fortunes of the Coca-Cola brand, but actually Coca-Cola's association with significant cultural purpose. And the benefit of all of that, Dave, is that in 2006 Coke's share price was an all-time low of $29, and by the end of 2013 when Coca-Cola was recognized by the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity as the world's most creative brand and the world's most creative marketing organization, the share price had increased to $82. Now what's significant about a $29 to $82 leap is that it was the time of the global financial crisis, and Coca-Cola was one of the few companies that actually increased market cap during that turbulent time. I'm not saying that it was all to do with creativity and marketing, but creativity and marketing was one of the drivers that really led to that success.

Dave Yuan: Yeah. A hundred percent. Those types of numbers work in any environment but with the great recession in the backdrop, that's awesome. And so let's unpack that a little bit. What was the point of arrival which you got clarity that the messaging had to change, had to move off of this incredible legacy?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Well, for brands like Coca-Cola, the challenge is, how do you remain eternally relevant to an ever-changing audience? Because Coke's sweet spot, in terms of adoption, is young teenagers. And if you get young teenagers to embrace Coca-Cola, then the chances are, as they move out of those teenage years and become parents, then they will introduce their children to Coca-Cola for special occasions like birthdays and Christmas time, etc. And what Coke had kind of failed to understand was really how to motivate and inspire the millennial consumer. And so we knew that millennial consumers were much, much more interested in purpose-driven brands than previous generations.  Now the trick is always doing purpose-driven marketing through a lens of authenticity. And we've seen some disastrous cases, just over the last couple of years, of brands trying to lean into purpose but they don't really have that sense of provenance in that area, and so they become ridiculed very quickly by the audiences and by media, and this has been amplified through the power of social media. But for Coca-Cola, it was always going back to the essence, that a Coca-Cola, a simple glass of Coca-Cola, or a bottle of Coca-Cola can genuinely bring two people together, and those two people can have a small moment of happiness through cultural exchange and Coke is a channel for that.

Dave Yuan: Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so you're in the corner office at Coca-Cola. You have the pinnacle of the branded advertising world. You've got a big, impressive, and powerful role and title, big budget, these mega partnerships, and then Airbnb called. Tell me about what attracted you to Airbnb and why you would give up this great role at Coca-Cola for what at the time was a relatively unproven startup.

Jonathan Mildenhall: I get a call from Brian Chesky, and he asked me to come to San Francisco. I had dinner with him, and the dinner was three hours of the most inspirational and challenging conversation that I'd ever had because Brian's vision was just awesome. And so my interview with Brian was as intense as his interview with me. And I said to Brian, "Brian, you know, I really do believe in the purpose and the power of the purpose of the Coca-Cola brand. Can you share with me the purpose of Airbnb? Is it just a property rental platform?" And Brian looked at me, and he said, "No, we're so much more than that. I genuinely believe, Jonathan, that Airbnb can help create a much greater sense of belonging in the world through the hospitality of individual hosts opening up their individual homes." Well as soon as Brian said, "Belonging" to me, and that the essence of the Airbnb brand was around belonging, I jumped at it. Because I said to Brian, "If we get this right, belonging will prove to be more valuable to the Airbnb brand than happiness is to the Cola-Cola brand." And Brian said, "Are you just marketing to me right now? Why are you so excited about it?" And I said, "Well, think about it, Brian. Belonging is a primary driver of humankind. Belonging is a need state that every single human being, each and every day, wakes up and yearns for. If not consciously, unconsciously. And when we were cavemen, we were all sat around a fire, and we weren't sat around a fire looking for happiness, we weren't in the pursuit of happiness. We sat around a fire in the pursuit of belonging."

And I got back on the plane, and I knew that if Airbnb would have me, I would leave the Coca-Cola Company and partner with the founders to create a brand that defines this generation, built on the power of purpose.

Dave Yuan: Yeah. That is certainly a primary driver. My goodness, it's probably one of the biggest targets if you think about a mission on a global scale. So it sounds like you were impassioned and really energized by the challenge, but given you are stepping into a startup is probably overstating it because at a $1 billion valuation, that's not a small company, but it's certainly much smaller than some of the resources you had at Coca-Cola. How did you feel like you could get this done? On your plane ride back, there was the excitement of the challenge, but where did the confidence that you could do this come from?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Well, to be honest, Dave, I think every single big leap that I've made in my career has been into the world of the unknown. I knew that the founders of Airbnb would not accept what I call creative okay. They were only interested in creative excellence, and they had actually studied brands like Coke and Nike and Apple and Disney. They'd actually studied those brands as they were pulling together the job spec for the CMO role. So, I knew that their ambition to create the world's next global super brand met with my ambition to do the world's greatest marketing. But I actually didn't know anything about technology. I didn't know anything about the marketplace. I was just starting to learn about hospitality and the role that hospitality plays, and so there was so much of my decision to join Airbnb was really based upon my faith that the three founders would encourage me and support me and inspire me to do the very, very best strategic and creative work of my career. 

Dave Yuan: In Silicon Valley, where historically product has been king, or product has been queen, you have three founders here that have a strong commitment and mandate around true brand. I guess if you were to give advice to other people in similar positions would-- and you're trying to build this ambitious and important purpose-driven brand. Would you go to a company that wasn't as bought in at the highest levels? Can you rally people around the notion of a purpose-driven brand, or do you have to have full mandate from the top? 

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah. I think it's really, really important that you have founder and CEO buy-in. To be honest, in all of the work that I'm now doing, and I'm working with a whole portfolio of different companies, I'm very conscious of this fact, that unlocking the purpose of the company and building a brand around that is so tied to the deepest thoughts, ambitions, concerns, and imagination of the founders. So, I actually didn't create anything around Airbnb. What I did is, I unlocked the deepest desires of the three founders and helped turn their ideas and their thoughts and helped get them out of their heads and turn it into a compelling narrative.

Dave Yuan: So, we could spend a lot of time as to what you did operationally to make Airbnb the brand that it is, but maybe if you were to leave people with-- to talk through things you got done there. What would you tell fellow CMOs as they engage in similar paths?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Businesses start to unravel when there is a disconnect between the narrative of your investor, the narrative of your community, and the narrative of your employees. And so, the first thing that you need to do is have the organization and the founders understand that brand does not sit on the side and is the responsibility of just the marketing team. Brand sits at the center and is the thing that you use to integrate all aspects of the business. So that's the first thing. Secondly, you really need to understand the deepest barriers to growth and, indeed, drivers of growth for the existing customer base and also your growth customer base. And then the marketing platform needs to accelerate the drivers and reduce the barriers.

And that's what we did with Airbnb. But the very first campaign that we ran actually leaned into the biggest barrier that the growth audience for Airbnb was faced with, and that's this notion of staying with strangers. And so, the ad campaign, the very first line of the ad campaign, read as follows, "Dear stranger, when I first bought this trip, my friends thought that I was crazy. Why would you stay in somebody else's house?" And we put that as the intro line to Airbnb's first global campaign because we knew this concept of strangers and staying in somebody else's house -- it sounds ridiculous now because five years later everybody's staying in Airbnb. But at the time, that was the biggest barrier, and we put that barrier front and center in our first global marketing campaign, and as a result of that, it evaporated this barrier. People were no longer concerned with this notion of traveling and staying with strangers because people were like, "Airbnb has actually pricked the bubble around this conversation, and now it's okay to talk about staying with strangers and what that feels like."

Dave Yuan: Jonathan, that's incredible. Very few brands can change consumer behavior, and I agree a hundred percent with both the strength of that campaign and how it unlocked a growth driver for Airbnb. That's a great example. A lot of times, you'll actually need to try and challenge or push consumer behavior through fairly provocative or emotional topics. And I recall at Coca-Cola you had a handful of campaigns that, frankly, challenged the sensibilities of some of the executives, and I suspect you similarly had some campaigns at Airbnb that did likewise. How do you manage the blowback? 

Jonathan Mildenhall: It's such a great question, and there is no immediate playbook on this. There are a number of things that you do to ensure against significant internal blowback. First of all, it's really, really important that whatever issue you're leaning into, the brand has an authentic reason for carrying that issue. So, let me give you an example. Coca-Cola has run America the Beautiful, which was on the Super Bowl in two separate years. It's the only commercial that was run on the Super Bowls in two different Super Bowls in history. And that commercial shows the ever-changing nature of the American family, including Jewish families and Muslim families and gay families and multi-generational Mexican families. And the song, America the Beautiful, is sung in different languages that reflect those different cultures. It was incredibly provocative. It's still quite provocative to certain communities here in the United States. But the reason why Coca-Cola was able to lean into that conversation was it's had a history of serving the American family in very authentic ways and Coca-Cola has always brought people together over different cultural divides. Now, you juxtapose that with Pepsi's campaign of two years ago, where Pepsi used a scenario that felt like it was a Black Lives Matter demonstration. They used Kendall Jenner, one of the most photographed women on the planet, and they used her offering a policeman a can of Pepsi as a way to dispel this potential riot that was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Candidly speaking, Dave, it was completely tone-deaf. Pepsi had never had a history of leaning into social issues. It was a gratuitous use of celebrity, and to be honest, the fact that that even made it's way to air really does surprise me because anybody who saw that inside the organization could not justify Pepsi's reason for leaning into that story.

Now, when Coke runs American the Beautiful - and as I say, it's done it in two separate Super Bowls now - there is always consumer blowback but then Coke shows and can demonstrate a history of leaning into such issues. And even though that consumer blowback is initial -- because to everybody who is listening, if you're doing anything at all that's provocative -- and you'll probably have experienced this yourself - it's always the haters and the trolls who come out first. And if it's authentic to the brand and you can stand by your purpose, the last thing you need to do as a company is do a walk back. You just pause and hold for a moment. And it'll feel like a week. But you hold for an hour and then you get the fans and the people who are real advocating for the brand on the brand's behalf. They come out, and they drown out the haters in the most fantastic way. And for me, it was incredible, because I got one hate tweet when I ran America the Beautiful for the first time. And the tweet went something like, "You're black, you're gay, you're British. Get back to the UK and stop effing around with the American national anthem." And I was like, "Wow." Yeah, I am all of those things, but that was not the American national anthem so your intelligence isn't anything that I should think about. And I paused, and then I got a tweet from Vice President Biden saying, "Bravo, Coca-Cola. This is exactly the kind of work that brands need to do to show the beautiful diversity and unity of the American people." The haters came out first, we held, and then the people who are really, really passionate about the campaign and about the brand came out in support, and it included the White House. So, we were very proud of that.

Dave Yuan: That is such a great story. Just as a human, your story let alone our topic today, that's fantastic. Putting my investor hat on-- and this is a good transition to your new venture working with companies, but putting my investor hat on, what I heard is authenticity as an asset. Right? If you're going to make provocative statements, it can be highly powerful but also dangerous. And you can really only do that if you've been in these types of conversations, showing authenticity over a long period of time. Building a purpose-driven brand and being in these conversations builds an increasing moat over time where others really can't follow, and that, to me, really helps connect the purpose-driven brand to building competitive advantage and building these great businesses.

Jonathan Mildenhall: That's totally right.

Dave Yuan: So let's do that. Let's transition to your new venture. We've been fortunate to have you work with a couple of our portfolio companies. Rethinking through their brand strategy and, frankly, their corporate strategy. Tell me how you work with companies.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Well, thank you for asking this question. So, my co-founders, a lady called Alex Dimiziani and a gentleman called Neil Barrie, and I have all worked together. Alex and I worked together at the Coca-Cola Company and then again at Airbnb, and Neil was one of the agencies that we were working with to help build the global communication strategy for Airbnb. So, we'd all worked together. And it was interesting. I was approached by a couple of very high-profile Silicon Valley tech companies asking if I would consider being their CMO. And we'd done such an amazing job at Airbnb, and I didn't really want to go in and be another operating CMO. But because there was a lot of interest in the work that we'd done at Airbnb, my response to a number of these offers was, "Actually, I don't want to be the CMO, but if I set up a company, could I help you unlock the potential of your brand but from the outside?" And I feel very grateful that a number of early approaches said, "Yeah. Open up the company, and we'd like to do business with you."

And so our purpose, TwentyFirstCenturyBrand, is to really work with founders and CEOs and to help them develop the most influential brands of our time. And we really do believe that companies like -- Uber and WeWork and Airbnb and Peloton and Pinterest, these brands can become the Coca-Colas and the Nikes and the Apples of the next generation if they are really smart and strategic about their approach to brand and their approach to marketing and, importantly, their approach to community engagement.

Dave Yuan: Jonathan, that's super helpful. If you look outside of the brands that you've worked with outside of Coca-Cola and Airbnb, what are the strongest purpose-driven brands? Yeah, my favorite, both as a brand and as a company, really as an organization, is Patagonia. Right? I don't think of their -- what they do as campaigns or brands. I think of it as advocacy and activism and conservation. What are the other brands and companies out there that are really leading the way?

Jonathan Mildenhall: It's a great question, and I agree. Patagonia, no matter what dimension you look at Patagonia, whether it's the ethics of the leadership team, whether it's their commitment to supply chain, whether it's their education of their community about recycling or sustainability, Patagonia is world-class on purpose. It's built on purpose. It leads purpose. It's such a great brand. And other brands that I think deserve a call out because it's incredible how a small purpose-driven company can unseat an entire industry, and I right now am kind of obsessed with ThirdLove. And for the members who don't know what ThirdLove is, ThirdLove is a women's underwear company, a lingerie company, and its entire position is lingerie for real women. And they've got a tech-based app that helps women measure themselves properly in the comfort of their own home, but, really, its purpose is just about celebrating the authentic female body. And it's a small company, but in the category, it's got a huge share of conversation. And so ThirdLove, in my mind, is going to be one of the next Patagonias because everything that company does-- it's not just the brand. Everything that that company does is driven by purpose, and it's certainly one to watch.

Dave Yuan: Absolutely. Well, Jonathan, thanks so much for being generous with your time here. We could go on for hours, but I know you have a busy schedule, so really appreciate the thoughts and really just love having you part of our community.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Well, thanks very much, Dave. And thanks very much, everybody, for listening. It's been a real pleasure to participate in this.

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