Balancing Creativity and Business Growth in Uber's Marketing Strategy

Full transcript

Uber's big Super Bowl campaign this year was a hit: In the ad, actual Uber executives try to convince Diddy to produce a jingle for the company's membership program, Uber One. The entertaining spot was "about as blatantly overt about selling as you can get," says VP of Marketing David Mogensen — and he's proud of that.

"As an industry, I think we tend to think that selling is a bit of a dirty word," David says. "And so we do all this beautiful work that, as you said, wins all kinds of awards, but it's so afraid of being seen as selling that it doesn't actually sell anything. And in turn, it doesn't move the needle for the business."

Today on Building Better CMOs, David talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the impact of COVID-19 on Uber's business, thriving in different work environments (including overseas), and the challenges of measuring a campaign's performance, especially in the mid-upper funnel. He also talks about his previous roles at Google and BMW, what makes Uber's marketing culture more intense than other companies', and changing how the public thinks and feels about the Uber brand.

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Links:

• David's LinkedIn
• Greg's LinkedIn

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm.