UK: Airbnb has appointed former Facebook employee Edward Vince as creative director to lead its in-house creative hub division for the EMEA region.
Vince will manage Airbnb Creative in the region from the company’s London base and will be responsible for overseeing a multi-disciplinary team of talented creative individuals across design, experiential, interactive and social, photography and video.
The director will work with external agencies and creatives to deliver promotional campaigns for Airbnb moving forward. His role will also extend to ‘creating a vision’ for the internal team’s ‘continued growth’ and hiring additional creatives to work as full-time and contract collaborators.
The role is believed to be the first of its kind for the firm, particularly as it encompasses the EMEA market. However, Airbnb has sought to work with a hybrid creative model in recent years by partnering with TBWA and Wieden + Kennedy to manage its global creative account two years ago.
Vince’s appointment is the latest in a line of departures and hirings during a period of upheaval within Airbnb’s marketing department.
The firm has not had a permanent global chief marketing officer since Jonathan Mildenhall left in 2017 to head up his own creative consultancy firm Twenty First Century Brand. He later poached colleague and global marketing director, Alexandra Dimiziani, to join him.
Last year, Geoff Seeley replaced Dimiziani in the position that she had vacated, before former Apple and Ford executive Musa Tariq was recruited as Airbnb’s head of marketing for its Experiences division.
Following those moves, Airbnb brought in former Amazon and Groupon executive Vinayak Hegde to head up its global growth marketing and traffic platforms, as well as handle marketing activities for its Homes category.
As the company reportedly prepares to go public with an initial public offering (IPO) later this year, Airbnb is making concerted efforts to build up its Experiences division and develop more original content and original shows to strengthen its relationship with its traveller membership.
In the past two years, it has defied challenges faced by other Silicon Valley competitors to report consecutive yearly profits and reported over 500 million guest arrivals since its foundation in 2008.
Airbnb hopes that the hiring of Vince to its creative team will propel the company to new heights and further distinguish itself from seasoned market competitors like Booking.com.
