STIMY Ep 150: I Committed Career Suicide?! | Jonathan Mildenhall (ex-CMO, Airbnb & ex-SVP, Coca-Cola)
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Jonathan Mildenhall: I was a victim of racial abuse, verbal and physical, violent. A lot of the times I remember one day running home from school and I'm hitting my mom's thighs and I'm just, I don't want to be Brown. I want to be white. What can I do to be? Why? I just want to be like everybody else in this family.

Ling Yah: Johnson Mildenhall is the former managing director of TBWA, SVP of the Coca Cola company.

First CMO at Airbnb and independent board member at Peloton Interactive. He's also the co founder of 21st century brand and current chief marketing officer at Rocket Companies. In other words, someone at the very top of the marketing industry. Unfortunately, he faced tremendous racial abused growing up in the north of England and hated being black.

When he told his mom this, she said

Jonathan Mildenhall: Jonty, unfortunately, there are ignorant people who will always be frightened because you look different, uh, and uh, they're gonna say hurtful things and sometimes they will do hurtful things. You know, you can't. change your packaging but they can never, ever damage what's inside of your packaging.

Ling Yah: While at Manchester Metropolitan University, his career advisor told him,

Jonathan Mildenhall: Jonathan, with a personality and character like yours, I don't know why you're not majoring in marketing. You have the creativity, the intellect, the social skills to be fantastic in marketing.

Ling Yah: Jonathan thought he'd found his calling.

Even though the odds were against him, but then he gets a call.

Jonathan Mildenhall: And the call goes, Congratulations, we'd like to offer you a job. I burst into tears. And then they say, look, Jonathan, we need you to know that there's been a whole debate about you. Um, uh, because you're very different to the normal profile of a graduate trainee.

We've never recruited from Polytechnic, uh, you come from a Leeds Council Estate. We're not sure that this is going to work out, but at the same time, there's something really compelling about you. You light up a room, you're very, very emotionally intelligent, um, we think that clients would trust you. We've just decided that we're just going to experiment and we want you to join us.

I called my mom and I said, mom, I'm at the top of my career. I am a vice president at the Coca Cola company responsible for advertising on a global basis. And my mom was so proud, she was in tears, she would say, Oh, Jonty, I'm so proud of you. This is absolutely fantastic. How do you feel? And I was like, I'm shit scared, mom.

I don't know how to do this job. I'm an imposter.

Ling Yah: But as it turns out, advertising was the perfect fit. And this is Jonathan's story of how he rose to the very top of his industry and what it means to pursue your crazy unconventional dreams.

So are you ready? Let's go.

I'm ready.

Ling Yah: Hi, Jonathan. Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast today. When I was doing my research on who you are, your story, there were certain words that came to me, curiosity, optimism, confidence, a love of storytelling. And as I was thinking of these words, I thought, well, this sounds pretty much like a child.

And I learned during my research that in meetings, you would sometimes say, Forgive me, but the eight year old Jonathan Mildenhall is coming out, and I wonder, who is this eight year old Jonathan Mildenhall? Can you bring us back all the way to the 1960s?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me and for all the listeners for giving us your time to listen and participate in this conversation.

Gratitude is something that I practice and I feel immense gratitude that I have this opportunity to share my story. So thank you.

When I was a little eight year old boy, I was extraordinarily naive, and I was extraordinarily lonely. And the reason why I was extraordinarily lonely is I was born into a family of white people.

So my two elder brothers are white, my two younger brothers are white. My mom had five kids to three different men by the age of 26. And she had an affair with the Nigerian guy in the middle of that. And I'm the result of this very kind of short lived affair. And I didn't really have a deep connection with anybody in my household, except for my mother.

And so I would come home from school and I would go out into the neighborhood knocking on people's doors, you know, asking if I did the washing up, would they invite me in for dinner, etc. And so from a very, very early age, I programmed myself to be social and I programmed myself to be liked.

And the benefit of that would be that it would get into other households and develop relationships with other families on the project, which I was born into.

And so from a very early age. early age, I've just been exposed to different types of families, different types of people, different types of traditions. And that's given me a curiosity in people that I still have today. I love the study of humanity. I love it. And also when I was eight years old, you know, everything was a creative opportunity.

I used to look at the world with wonder and with surprise and with kind of like delight. And I recognized that as I was climbing up the corporate ladder in the advertising industry in the UK. And as I moved to become a marketer, as I moved to the U S in the early two thousands quite often the burden of experience and adulthood can sometimes suffocate the inner creative child that we all have.

I was reminded of this by an art project in the 1990s when I was asked, this was before Photoshop, and I was asked to be a subject in this art project where the artist basically took a picture of me from school, one of these school portraits, aged eight years old, and fused it with my 39 year old self.

And it was this weird image that I saw for the first time of the beauty of the innocence of my eight year old and all of the creativity that was so evident in this eight year old image. And then the experience of my late 30 something image coming together. And as soon as I saw that, I realized that for me, being conscious of when I let my inner child, my creative, curious, unafraid inner child, actually lead my contribution in business.

That's when I'm at my most creative. And then sometimes I have to put my eight year old inner child on the back seat. And let my now 56 year old, experienced, weathered executive take the lead voice.

And I'm very, very conscious of swapping the driving seat, if you like, in between the more creative me that was really unafraid And the more experienced me that has an awful lot of responsibility, and I try and encourage everybody that I work with to tap into their inner child.

And because, you know, there is always an opportunity for that inner child to seize creative ideas and to be creative without being constrained in any way. And then sometimes to let the more experienced adult lead, but that duality of childlike wonder and adult like experience, I think creates value whenever I show up anywhere in the world.

Ling Yah: I think there's a feeling of wonder as I listen to your story because the reality is, and I assume people listening don't know this, you actually grew up with a lot of abuse as well just for being who you are, yet you still somehow managed to maintain that sense of initial childlike openness to people.

It's very easy for people to just be jaded and just hate the world, but you didn't go down that path. What was the secret?

Jonathan Mildenhall: You know, being born a black child in a white project in the north of England in the 1960s and 70s when there was so much racism on the streets of Britain, on the TV screens of Britain, you know, in the political discourse of Britain, there was so much racism.

And there was so much ignorance. And so, yes, I was a victim of racial abuse verbal and physical violence a lot of the times. And I remember because I was the only black person in my family, I remember one day running home from school and you know, bursting through the door. My mom's in the kitchen and I'm hitting, I was only a little child.

Cause I can remember I'm hitting my mom's thighs and I'm just going, I don't want to be brown. I want to be white. What can I do to be white? I just want to be like everybody else in this family. And my mom sat me down and I remember it honestly, as if it was just yesterday, one of the most instrumental and transformative conversations of my life.

And she sat me down and she said, Jonti, she's the only person in the whole world who calls me Jonti. Jonti unfortunately, there are ignorant people who will always be frightened because you look different. And they're going to say hurtful things and sometimes they will do hurtful things. She said, but the one thing that you have that they don't have, Is you have this incredible energy that makes people want to be with you and makes you interesting to other people.

And she said, you know, you can't change your packaging, but they can never ever damage what's inside of your packaging. And what's inside of your packaging is this beautiful energy. And she said to me, and I remember she said, when you smile, the whole house smiles.

And when you don't smile, then the house feels dark and I didn't really fully understand truly the impact of what my mom was telling me about my energy and how my energy can be contagious in a positive way.

My energy can also be contagious in a negative way. But it was when I was at the Coca Cola company working for a lady called Wendy Clark. And this was, you know, in my early forties. And Wendy and I were incredibly intimate and she knew this story.

And she reminded me of the power of my energy and how my energy can Impact other people and uplift other people, you know, anything from a one on one, I can have a transformative impact on somebody, or one to 5000 people in an arena, I can have a transformative impact on people.

And she reminded me of the need to be conscious of the power of my energy and use it responsibly. And You know, I like to say that people can feel victimized because of their appearance, because of their gender because of their race, because of their religion. But if you're strong enough and conscious enough to appreciate that the one thing that people can't take away is character, And is energy then I use my character and my energy as a jujitsu move to any negative force that might come towards me.

And I try and encourage other people to do the same.

Ling Yah: I thought as I was researching that the relationship you have to your mom, it's one of the most beautiful ones I came across. And so on your profile, I'm just going to share this. I found this photo of you and your mother, which I thought was amazing.

And it's a bit about show a bit of leg. And I wonder, does this photo sort of encompass the relationship you have with your mom? What is the story behind this photo and I believe she used to bring you to theaters and you saw life in full color for the first time.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah. Yeah. So I love that picture.

And thank you for ambushing me with humanity, because that's one of the corporate values of our consultancy 21st century brand. And and that image is a remarkable image because I was 16 years old. And yeah, I have two elder brothers and I have two younger brothers, but I was 16 years old, and my mom comes to me.

Downstairs in the morning, one morning wearing sunglasses. Now, I hadn't kind of accepted my gayness at the time. But a big telltale sign is that I was the only one of five boys to ever critique what my mum was wearing each and every day. And she came down the stairs and she's wearing sunglasses.

And I go, oh, mum, you shouldn't be wearing sunglasses today. Why are you wearing sunglasses today? She was like, not today. And so I knew that she was in a very different place. And so I went up to her and I said to her, Mom, why are you wearing sunglasses? And I took the sunglasses off and she had a black eye.

And my stepfather had beaten her up during the evening. And something in me just broke. I was like, I can no longer be the child in this relationship. I have to be the man in this relationship, 16 years old. And so I said to mom, I'm not going to school today. You're not going to work today. We're going to go and find another house.

We've got to live in another house. And we had no idea what we were doing. But we ended up getting a bus down to the center of Leeds, and we found an estate agent. And this estate agent, you know, sometimes when you're the most vulnerable, the universe can send a hero. And this estate agent, this realtor you know, I walked in to say, Hey, I'm 16 years old.

My mom's in an abusive relationship. We need a house, but we don't know what we're doing. And this was one of the wealthiest realtors in England, a guy called Trevor Nabarro. I can still remember the name. And. You know, my mom didn't have any money, but there was something about his humanity that he just took my mom and I under his wing.

And within six months, he was able to help my mom and I move into a house. She bought a house for 11, 000 pounds. It was probably quicker within probably about six weeks, actually. And my mom and I moved into a tiny little house and got away from the abusive stepfather that I was, had been living with for the previous, say, 13 years.

And that image that you've just shown was my mom and I out at her work's Christmas party. And I feel that my mom had found freedom and as a result of that happiness for the very first time because she fell pregnant with her first child at 18. And so from her being 18 to then me being 16 and helping her find a life of independence and freedom, free from abuse was a very, very special period.

And that's the time when my relationship with my mom really became An intimate relationship based on friendship and protection and respect all of those things mutual.

Ling Yah: Would you say that that feeling of needing to protect your mom's independence also pushed you to thinking I should be an accountant because it's safe and stable and gives me that financial means?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah so I loved school. I really did love school. And I was bright relative to my peer group in school. Not because I was academically more capable. It's just that I had a passion for school.

I just worked hard at school and you know, I did fairly well but I knew that my pathway out of poverty and my ability to continue to provide ongoing security for my mom was if I went on to higher education and I wasn't educated about education.

And so I got in at Manchester Polytechnic and I was doing the HND in business and finance, because people around me were like, Oh, you are quite bright and you're quite good with numbers. You should be an accountant. I didn't know what a professional career was. I didn't know what a white collar career was.

'cause you just didn't have those. I mean, you know, the kind of jobs that people had on the estate that I grew up on were kind of car mechanics and shop workers and, and the like. And so I went off in to Manchester Paula Technique. And at the end of my first year, I'm dealing with my homosexuality for the first time, another thing that I was deeply shameful about.

And and I was failing and I was like, I can't get thrown off this course. If I get thrown off this course, I have to go back to the project in Leeds. And. I will never be able to really truly help my mom in the way that I think that I can and I sat down with the careers advisor and she was the one and again, the universe, presenting people that could have a transformative impact on your life just through one conversation.

She was the one who said to me, Jonathan, with a personality and character like yours, I don't know why you're not majoring in marketing. You have the creativity, the intellect, the social skills to be fantastic in marketing. And I took her advice and I dropped a number of financial related subjects and I picked up a number of marketing related subjects.

One of them was advertising and in my first advertising tutorial because of the power of a professor named Alan Portner who described the career paths within an advertising agency, I knew that advertising was my calling and I would have a career in advertising.

Ling Yah: So this career advisor is Monica and you realize that, oh, this is what I want to do.

Then you go back to her and she says, oh, but actually advertising is not for someone like you because you need to be from Oxbridge, you need to be white, middle class. When I was reading that, I thought if I was you, I would be really upset. You're the person who told me to look into marketing. Now I decide I want it.

And you say, no, you can never do that. But your reaction was, I'm going to commit to being the most informed, research, creatively stimulating graduate applicants. Where is that mentality coming from? How did you even begin to ensure that you were at least, To the fullest extent you can, the best applicant out there.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah. So that was, it was fascinating because Monica said to me, marketing within the marketing as stream at Manchester Polytechnic, then there was an advertising module. I elected to take the advertising module and it was advertising that I fell in love with. And so then I go back to Monica and I go, Oh, Monica, you're completely right.

Yeah. Marketing is where I want to be. I'm going to be an account person in an advertising agency. And she was like, the advertising industry is the most elite intake of anybody that might be associated with marketing. So I think you're setting your ambition too high. Yeah. And at the time, this is back in the late 1980s, advertising only recruited from Oxford and Cambridge.

It only recruited white people and it only recruited people from upper middle classes. And, and she was right. I was black, working class, polytechnic educated. And, and I remember her giving me this advice from a place of absolute compassion, real compassion. And again, jiu jitsu move. I took that And I thought, God, in one sentence, she has said that my paternal background, my academic background, my socioeconomic background is not, is going to stand in the way of me getting this job.

But, but I, when Dr. Alan Paltner was describing the advertising industry, he lit something in me that I wouldn't let die out. And so I thought, Okay I have to spend the next two years researching every aspect of the British advertising industry, understanding which agencies and which brands, which senior clients are buying great creative work, what the creative ethos was like for every single agency, how I might be, I mean, cheeky, cheeky, how I might, Jonathan Mildenhall, who's still an undergrad at Manchester Polytechnic, How I might have done each campaign better.

I would literally be studying campaigns and I'm going, how would I have made that better if I was at the agency? Or how would I have made that better if I was the client? So by the time I came to be interviewed, I knew that I wasn't the most academic. I certainly didn't come from the right economic background.

And it was obvious that That I was black. I put a big black photo. I don't know if we're recording this. We are. That's great. This is the photo that I sent in. Oh wow. With my resume. Because I wanted everybody, my name is an English sounding name. But, and I didn't want to turn up, because this is before the internet or anything, I didn't want to turn up to reception and then have that awkward, oh my goodness, you're a black guy.

So I had a professional photo of 18 year old Jonathan taken, so that everybody would be able to look at my application and realize that there was a black guy. So there'd be no awkwardness in the reception areas of these agencies that I was applying to. Now, the first agency that I applied to was J Walter Thompson.

They interviewed me at J Walter Thompson, Manchester. And it was one of the most uncomfortable, unpleasant professional experiences that I've ever had, because there was this. young account exec interviewing me, this young account exec was obviously so wealthy from a very, very wealthy family and his structure and his braces and his pinky gold ring and his poppish hair.

And he was incredibly well educated. And I walked into his office and he was just like, what are you doing here? Why do you think you could be an account person at J. Walter Thompson? I'm, I'm sorry, Jonathan, but there's kind of been a mistake and I got a letter and I still have the letter from J. Walter Thompson.

Dear Mr. Mildenhall, thank you for your interest. You are not J. Walter Thompson persona. So we will not be pursuing our application any further. Good luck. I still got that letter. Wow. That was the first interview with the British advertising industry. And, and I was like, Monica was right.

None of my research, none of my creativity, none of my perspective on the industry is ever going to get over the fact that I come from Manchester Polytechnic. And I'm a black guy and I was born on, born onto a project. And then I got interviews at McCann Erikson and Ogilvy and May there and Leo Burnett.

And great. So I started to get more interviews. So my application was successful because I was getting interviews.

Ling Yah: Inspired by your photo.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Inspired by my photo. And and I went down to London. And, I don't know, there was just something about the energy. Because my J. Walter Thompson interview was the first one that I had was in Manchester.

And there was something about walking into a London advertising agency and feeling the energy of a London advertising agency back in the late 80s that, you know, the energy of the advertising agency rose up to meet me.

And I just had to rise up to meet the energy of the advertising agency. And I felt even though I was intimidated by these incredible corporate offices I felt that I had a right to be there. And I remembered the words of my mom. And I remembered the words of Monica. Character and energy. Just let my character shine, just let my energy impact others, and I'll be okay.

And then, long story short, I remember going back to Monica, to say to Monica, Monica, yeah, I got a job in a London agency! You'll see. And, and she said, congratulations. I mean, she stood, stood up and we were hugging. We did. It's like, yeah, it's Ogilvy and Maida, but I'm not going to take it. And she was like, Jonathan, you have to take it.

And I was like, no, no, because I've got another job in a London agency. It's McCann Erickson, and I like McCann Erickson people better. And in that space of two years, because of the wisdom that she gave me, which was really like, Jonathan, if you're serious about this, you're gonna have to work harder than you've ever worked.

I was able to go back to her and say, you know, with pride, I'm the first ethnic minority, the first polytechnic educated graduate in McKenna Erickson's history. And so I'm rewriting history and I wouldn't have been given the opportunity to do that, Monica, had you have not said, Hey, finance, I'm not sure that that's right.

Marketing, storytelling creative industries, that's a much better fit. And here we are today.

Ling Yah: I imagine one of the people you said you really liked at McKen Erickson was Sarah Patterson. And she actually staked her reputation on you, this person who was completely not the typical model. What was it that Sarah saw you because they were very open and said, you're an experiment.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah, that's right. It's weird how social and professional mores change over the years. And I think this is unfortunate but because of kind of workplace conduct, I'm not sure that you could have this conversation with somebody who is othered now. But. Sarah and a guy called Richard Curtis, who Sarah was leading the graduate training program at McCann back in the 1990s.

And I get this call and the call goes, congratulations, we'd like to offer you a job. I burst into tears. This is like, I wasn't really expecting it. And then they say, look, Jonathan, we need you to know that there's been a whole debate about you. Because you're very different to the normal profile of a graduate trainee.

We've never recruited from Polytechnic. You come from a Leeds council estate. We're not sure that this is going to work out, but at the same time, there's something really compelling about you. You light up a room, you're very, very emotionally intelligent, and we think that clients would trust you.

And so we just decided that we're just going to experiment and we want you to join us. And, but it is going to be a bit of an experiment.

The license to fail that McCann and I had an unspoken contract on was all I needed to be successful. I mean, like literally, this is an experiment and I'm happy, I'm happy to play my part in the experiment. You're giving me truly a transformational opportunity of a lifetime. And if I fail on this experiment, I can, I know that I'll be able to come back up to Manchester and get a job in a local agency because Mechanics in London gave me this opportunity to try.

So for me, it was a win win situation. I was hoping that I would win. McCann Ericsson London's favor and stay in London, but if I didn't win McCann Ericsson London's favor and I was asked to leave after a year because it wasn't working out, then McCann Ericsson had given me 12 months of work experience that any northern based agency would die for.

So for me, it was win win. And for McCann, it was also a kind of win win. We're trying something different, but if he doesn't work out, we've already had the conversation with him that, you know, he might not work out, so it'll be an easy exit. And and what happened is I spent three years at McKenna Ericsson, became a really, really respected account manager in the company taking, I was working on the company's showcase accounts.

I was doing really, really interesting work. And then I got a call from BBH a very, very sexy high profile privately owned creative agency. They did Levi's and Audi and Boddington's and they did all sorts of really sexy stuff. And I got a call after three years from a guy called Simon Sherwood, the managing director there.

And he said, we've heard really, really good things about you. Would you come in for interview? And that call helped me realize. Even though I was closeted at the time and I want to talk to you about how uncomfortable that can be for a professional. But that call helped me realize that I had the opportunity of going all the way to the top in the British advertising industry.

Because no other agency would. Take the experiment, every other agency would be recruiting me based on, you know, my credentials and my potential to do a more elevated job.

Ling Yah: On your first day at BBH, you met John Hegarty, who's the creator behind legendary ad campaigns for Levi's, Lego, Audi. What was it like meeting him for the first time on that first day?

Jonathan Mildenhall: You can only imagine how intimidated I was meeting John Hegarty for the first time and what made it even more surreal is 18 months beforehand I'd written a thesis on why BBH, Battle Bogle Hegarty, was so successful as a British agency and what was in its leadership DNA and its strategic DNA and its creative DNA that clients felt so compelling.

And I never. ever thought that I would get to meet Sir John Hegarty, let alone be in his office. And on the first day, and this was fantastic that BBH did this, any new recruits basically got to shadow the head of traffic for the day. And And the head of traffic was the guy that's responsible for making sure that all the creative work is moving through the agency at the right time.

I would start his day with John Hegarty reviewing the creative work that was going to be presented to clients that day. And so I shuffle in to John Hegarty's office, I always remember this black sheep, this beautiful black sheep in his office, which I now have a replica of in my home. Because it reminds me of the power and beauty of being different.

And everybody sits down and And I, I get introduced John, this new account guy, he's running Audi, he's called Jonathan. John says, hi Jonathan, thank you for joining BBH, we hope you do the best work of your career here. And I remember that we were looking at looking at a whole load of NatWest Bank press ads, press concepts.

And the creative team were walking John through all the lines and the ideas. John turns around to me and he says, What do you think Jonathan? I, I, I wasn't expecting for my opinion to be sought. I, I didn't have a Point of view on the creative work, because I was so nervous, my throat went dry, and then I, and I said, painfully, I said, I'm not sure that I can answer that because I'm not really sure that I understand who the target audience is.

And so, John Haggerty turned around and looked at me and said, you are the target audience for everything that comes out of this company, because you are a creative human being. And our stories, regardless of brand, need to be able to move you. Otherwise we are not doing our job. Because BBH's work crosses cultures.

BBH's work crosses categories. BBH's work creates iconic brands. And iconic brands are admired and loved by everyone. So it doesn't matter that you're not the target audience, Jonathan. Don't use that language ever again. You have a point of view, a creative point of view, and everything this company does.

So I felt incredibly burdened incredibly exposed, but also incredibly gifted with the license that my point of view on anything that BBH was doing from a creative perspective would be valued over time. I believe that to this day, I think the reason why I love my career is A, I love brands, I geek out about brands, B, I love people and understanding what truly motivates them, and C, I can work in any category I choose I don't have to be the target audience I don't have to understand the target market and be in the same position as the target market to build brilliant, iconic brands that can actually shape the world for the better.

And that was Day one's lesson from John Haggerty.

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Ling Yah (2): I love that you used the word expose because I'm going to bring back to what you said earlier. You were closeted and then there's this person called Cindy Gallop who basically dragged you out and kind of sounds like she changed your life. What was that event?

Could you share a bit more about that?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah I credit Cindy with giving me the license to love myself fully for the first time in my life.

Up until puberty, I hated the fact that I was black. Hated it. I didn't want to be black. I wanted to be the same as everybody else in my family. And I wanted to be the same as everybody else in my school.

And then when I hit puberty, I became very strong and I became very athletic and I became very big relative for my age. And I took pride in my blackness for the first time. And I started competing and started doing athletics. And it was through that experience that I met other black teenagers.

And I was full of admiration for the young teenage black athlete. And so I started to take a bit of pride in my blackness. But at the same time, I started, my sexuality started to get awakened. And I realized that I was gay. And I didn't want to be gay. Again, this is pre internet. This is the, there was, there was no, there was no role model for being gay.

Everybody was closeted if you were gay. It was something to be ashamed of. And so I was like, I've spent the past 13 years being ashamed of the color of my skin, and now I'm ashamed of my sexuality. This is awful. And You know, I moved down to London to be the experiment at McCann Erickson. But there was no way that I could say to anybody at McCann.

Yeah, I was educated in Manchester. I come from a council estate in Leeds. I'm a black guy and I'm gay. And so for the first three years of my career, I kept my gayness so closeted because I was so ashamed, so ashamed of being gay. And I used to hate Mondays. And the reason why I used to hate Mondays was because I'd been out that weekend, in clubs, dancing on podiums, in a pair of hot pants, with cheap jewellery around my neck, and then come Monday morning, people would say, what did you do this weekend, Jonathan?

And I'd say, I invented a girlfriend called Danielle who was actually a real friend, but she became my girlfriend in the office at McKenna Erickson. We got invited to weddings and everything. It was shocking how much fake narrative I wrapped around myself. To prevent people thinking that I was gay. And it was suffocating.

And actually one of the reasons why I left McCann to go to BBH is because I couldn't bear the burden and the shame of being gay. And, and yet I didn't want to test the people of McCann's tolerance. And so I thought, well, I'm going to get another job at another agency. And if anybody asks me, then I'm just going to come out as being gay.

I actually thought that I might have. a few months to acclimatize. But my boss at BBH was this incredible woman called Cindy Gallop. I learned so much from Cindy in terms of courage, conviction, creativity, confidence. But one day she walked into my office, I'm on the phone to the client that Cindy and I both serve, and she walks into the office and she Sits opposite me and I can tell she's impatient and she's wrapping her Chanel Noir nails on the desk as if to say get off the phone, get off the phone, get off the phone and Cindy always looked impeccable.

Actually for a gay guy to have a boss like Cindy was fantastic because you just admired every aspect of her, her presentation. And anyway, I come off the phone and she looks at me and she goes, Jonathan, you're gay, aren't you? And I'm not kidding you, Ling. I thought, I didn't see it coming. And I thought, oh my goodness, somebody's told her, somebody might have seen me in a club.

BBH is going to be really, really uncomfortable with this. I'm probably going to get fired. And so I literally go yes, I am. Why? And she was like, and you live with your boyfriend, don't you? And I was like, oh my goodness, somebody's told her that I live with Frank. Oh, so all of a sudden the conversation about this person called Danielle, this is like, this is terrible.

This is not what I want at all. And I said, Yes, I do. And she said, What's your boyfriend's name? So I said, Frank, and she wrote Frank on this envelope, and she gave it to me. And it was to Jonathan and Frank, and she said, It is my 30th birthday this weekend, and my birthday parties are legendary. Anybody who is anybody in this advertising industry will be there and I want you and Frank to be there too.

I walked out of the office, I burst into tears, I call Frank and go, Cindy just asked me if I was gay and she asked me if I loved it and we've got a party to go to this weekend and everybody in the industry's gonna be there and I, I don't.

And Frank was like, this is what you've wanted. You wanted to come out. That's why you moved to BBH in the first place. So let's go to this party. And credit to Cindy. I mean, she always serves legendary parties. They're brilliant parties. And anybody who's at the top of the industry is always there. And Frank and I walked into her house.

So, so nervous. And she introduced me to all of the cool leaders in the advertising industry. She introduced Frank as my boyfriend. And so not only did I come out to Cindy that week, I came out to the advertising industry that week.

And this is back in 1992. The only image you'd see of gay men in 1992 were the tabloid images Of Freddie Mercury battling HIV and AIDS and a radio DJ called Kenny Everett battling HIV and AIDS.

So there was just grotesque imagery about gay men all around. There was nothing aspirational about it at all. And because of Cindy, I was able to take the shame of my homosexuality to the next level. And bury that deep as deep as I'd buried the shame of the color of my skin. But when I think about it for the first 25 years of my life, I was driven by shame, shame because of the color of my skin, shame because of the poor background that I came from and shame because of my sexuality, but I was able to get into a place under the protection of somebody like Cindy, where I realized that all of that shame was serving me no more, and I could actually step into a real sense of authenticity.

And the following Monday morning, Cindy and I were having a one on one, and she said to me, Ii was great to see you and Frank on Saturday.

She said, Jonathan, there is something very, very special about you as a professional. You will go all the way to the top of this industry if you stay in your place of authenticity, she said, because your place of authenticity is so compelling.

And now you have nothing to be ashamed of. I'm just very excited about the work you'll get to do at BBH.

Again, a conversation that will stay with me forever. Because from that moment on. I have led with authenticity and I know that I have the ability to build confidence in other people in terms of how they should tap into and channel their own sense of authenticity through the work that they do.

Ling Yah: What does it look like to live, to work authentically, comparing your career before and after Cindy brought you to this party?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah I'm very clear on that. It takes less energy when you come from a place of authenticity. And the reason why it takes less energy is you're very, very clear on the things that are fueling your sense of authenticity and your authentic voice.

And when you're very clear on what is fueling that, something incredible happens. And that's, you just become incredibly courageous. And so I have built a career on doing courageous things with the brands that I'm in service of.

A lot of people would look at it and go, isn't that exhausting to be taking risk after risk after risk?

And I go, it's not really risky to me. It's actually the responsible thing to do if I'm spending a brand's money, but you look at my body of creative work over the years, authentic human intimacy is probably my signature look and feel for a lot of the campaigns that I've been associated with.

I couldn't put that into my work, unless I as a leader can be authentic, can be human and can be intimate.

Ling Yah: I love that you used the word courageous because one of the big courageous steps you did was to join Coca Cola senior VP, even though I quote you, you were shit scared.

How were those initial days despite the fact that you were shit scared?

Jonathan Mildenhall: You know, Every once in a while, people get a calling that makes them feel like they're an imposter.

I got a calling back in 2006 from a headhunter in Chicago saying, Hey, the Coca Cola company are looking for a global vice president of advertising.

I honestly thought that this was a networking headhunter call. Like who do you know in the UK that is talented enough to do this job? And so I was like, Oh, who do I know who could do that? And the headhunter said, well, we were hoping that you might put yourself forward.

And I remember honestly, Ling, deepening my voice. Oh yes. Okay. Well, yeah, I'd like to see the job spec.

But secretly in my mind going, they're crazy. There is no way that I would ever get this job, but I'm a cheap kid from Leeds. If they're going to fly me to Atlanta for a long weekend, and I get to meet some interesting people, and I get to stay in Atlanta, then, you know, I'm going to take it. And so, I put myself forward, thinking that I would just get an all expense paid trip to Atlanta, and I'd get to meet some Coke execs.

And what happened is my first interview was with another woman that has been so transformative to my own sense of self and my own sense of professional belief. And that was Esther Lee, and she was the company's chief creative officer.

I walked into her office. And she has incredible energy, like very different to Cindy Gallop, but like, you know, you walk in and you meet her energy.

And I sat down with her.

In my mind, I was like, this energy is something that I could really rise to the occasion on and meet. She said to me, literally, she just looked at me and said, Why are you here?

And so I said, Well, I can give you a short answer to that. Or if you let me speak for about nine minutes, I'll tell you my life story.

And then at the end of the nine minutes, it'll be very clear why I'm here. And what do you want? And she was like, I've got nine minutes. And so I started to talk to her about my background and how I got into advertising and what brands mean and all of this. And halfway through it, cause she was just looking at me, staring at me dead.

Halfway through, I was kind of stopped and said, is, is, is this okay? Can I go on? And she just said, This is good. This is very good. I knew right there that she would offer me the job.

Now, I have another 20 interviews over Coke over the next six weeks, but I just knew that Esther wanted me to work at Coke.

So long story short, I emigrated from the UK on my own, when I was 38 years old and I took this job at the Coca Cola company.

I'd never been a marketer. I'd never worked for an advertising agency that had more than 250 people. And now they were like, you know, I'm in a department of thousands of people all doing marketing for Coca Cola company brands.

And I remember I had a corner office on the 16th floor. And my EA took me into this office. I closed the door, this big oak door that was so thick, honestly, I could murder somebody in my office and nobody outside would ever hear that, hear it. And I looked, I went to the corner office. I took up my Motorola flip phone.

And I, I called my mom and I said, mom, I'm at the top of my career. I am a vice president at the Coca-Cola company responsible for advertising on a global basis. My mom was so proud. She was in tears. She would say, oh, Johnti I'm so proud of you. This is absolutely fantastic. How do you feel?

And I, I'm shit scared, mom. I, I don't know how to do this job. I'm an imposter. And, and I, I've got, I. And my mom, she calmed me down, and sometimes mother's words are so wise, because how did she know to tell me this?

But she said to me, she said, Jonty, find the people who've been at the Coca Cola company the longest, and make them your friends, because they'll have the answers for you.

So I was like, that's actually really, really good advice. I don't need any answers. I just need to make allies of the people who've got all the experience. And through that inquiry, who's been at the Coca Cola company the longest.

I got to meet the head archivist Coca Cola, a guy called (Phil Mooney) Yeah, and he'd been at the Cola company for 40 odd years and he became one of my closest friends over the course of my onboarding months at Koch.

Ling Yah: I looked him up and I realized that he's still at Coca Cola. He's the director of heritage communications, 40, almost 50 years going, which is amazing. That's incredible.

Jonathan Mildenhall: You know, the, the lesson that I took from the value that Phil Mooney gave me is a lesson that I would want every single person who is listening to this podcast to take.

When you join a new company, you have to get into the belly of the archives of that company. There's this fantastic image of a windscreen.

You can see that the car is driving on this long windy road, but in the image, you've got the rear view mirror and you can see that the road behind has been long and windy.

And I use that image in many of my presentations because I say to new marketers, in order for you to have credibility about where you want to take this brand or this organization or this portfolio of brands, you have a responsibility to all of the past marketers. And the past corporate leaders and the past shareholders and the past consumers to understand the history of that company better than anybody else.

And so with Phil, every Wednesday afternoon, I'd go down into the belly of the archive which was literally the basement of the Coca Cola company. And Phil would take me through the. History of Coke decade by decade by decade.

I mean, The Coca Cola company archive is the world's most valuable commercial archive because it's full of all of these pieces of art.

Norman Rockwell's and Andy Warhol's and you'd be pulling them out and you'd go, Oh my goodness, I know that this piece of work is worth 24 million. This piece of work is worth 18 million dollars.

And they were ads. They were ads at a certain point in time. And a nd Phil would tell me what was going on, what was the cultural context that was going on at the time that all of this fantastic creative work was at birth.

And because of his transfer of wisdom to me, through the lens of the creative archives, I knew that I would be very successful in getting long tenured execs at the Coca Cola company to believe in a much more provocative and creative vision going forward because of the amount of references that I was able to use about the times when Coca Cola as a company and Coca Cola as a brand had stood up for things that were much more significant than just the category claims that you see a lot of sodas taking.

Coca Cola as a brand had stood up and been really, really brave on the issues of diversity and sexism, on social isolation, on depression. And so I was like, Oh, Coke. Is that it's best when it is a cultural at bellwether and will stand for a cultural point of difference.

And that's what I am very proud to say that the team and I brought to coke through the launch of the open happiness campaign that became Coca Cola's most profit generating an award winning campaign in its history and helped take the Coca Cola company to the recognition of creative marketery the year at Cannes in 2013.

Ling Yah: I wonder before all that achievement, you had access to this person that Clyde Tuggle called the undisputed Dean of Corporate Archivists.

It's the one thing to have access to all that history, but setting the context back then, Coca Cola, all time low in terms of share price, chief executive set, We are creatively bankrupt.

A lot of people said internally creativity isn't objective, but you had to change that narrative to prove that actually creativity has direct impact on your financial performance.

How did you do that? There must have been a tremendous journey for you.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah it was really interesting because the chief exec at the time was a guy called Neville Isdale.

He was the one that had said to me, congratulations, you've got this job. You're going to travel around the world and you're going to be met with a whole load of received wisdom. And I want you to know that a lot of that received wisdom has no more value.

Because if it had value, we wouldn't be experiencing all time low share price right now. We wouldn't be experiencing real advances from the competitors and we wouldn't be what I call creatively bankrupt. So as you go around the world. I want you to listen but I don't want you to believe that the way that the playbook is right now is the playbook that we need going forward. And it was that.

That was incredible license. And yet at the same time, I'm always respectful of the things that are going on. I'm respectful of people who've been in seat longer than I have.

But I was able to draft on the back of some incredible work that Mark Matthew and Esther Lee had done in their strategic thesis, which was entitled The Revival of an Icon.

And there were leaders at center and leaders in field who all believed that Coca Cola had a cultural and creative right and a commercial responsibility to get back to doing brave creative work that would unite people all around the world.

And so I feel very lucky that I was part of this movement at Coca Cola that was being led by a bunch of leaders, again, Mark Mathieu. They empowered all of us to, to do great things and to think different.

Now, unfortunately, Esther left after I was only in seat for about six months. And that was terrible because I actually thought that I joined the Coca Cola company to work for her. And so when she called me, I was in Paris and she said, Hey, can you please call me? I've got news.

And, I remember the conversation. I was like, Esther, please tell me that you're staying at the company. Cause yeah, I remember when I first met you and I was like, I want to work for this woman. I don't know if I could work for the Coca Cola company without you because I share your creative vision for it.

And she was like, no, I'm sorry, I'm moving on, but you are going to be successful. Because of everything that you're already doing.

Being at Coke from 2006 to 2014 not only was I able to be part of the leadership team that transformed the commercial fortunes of the company because in 2018, Coca Cola was enjoying an all time high share price at $82.

But also I believe because we did this body of work, which I'd like the listeners to seek out on YouTube called content 2020. That was the Coca Cola company's creative manifesto that we used to inspire our agencies all around the world to do much better creative work. And we gifted that to the industry at Cannes in 2012, and then won creative market of the year in 2013.

Because what was brilliant about that is we made it public, which everybody thought it crazy because, you know, Pepsi now had Coca Cola's playbook.

But the reason why we made it public is we knew that if we made it public, every single creative agency that was working with the Coca Cola marketing teams all around the world on a local basis would hold.

The creative agencies would hold the marketers up for doing work that met the expectations of the content 2020 manifesto.

And it was beautiful to see, you know when I think of the success that I helped create at the Coca Cola company. The success was because every single agency on the global basis and every single marketing team inside the Coca Cola company just had license through content 2020 to be better, to think differently, and to put a premium on creativity.

And it was fantastic because that period of time really helped me understand that if you seed ideas in people and ideas in places all around the world then leadership can be really easy because you just have to stand back and watch the ideas flourish through the imagination of teams all over the world that you might not have any control over.

Ling Yah: I imagine one of the ideas that was different and you had definitely no control over was the 2014 Super Bowl, America the Beautiful. I found again on your Facebook there was this, I thought was amazing, this war room going on and you said as well that this ad almost caused your resignation and shit hit the fan.

What is the background to that for those who don't know what happened?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah, it was really interesting because I was the poster child at the Coca Cola company for diversity.

Yeah, I'm non American, I'm black, I'm gay. I was living very publicly with my German partner. I'm a creative person.

I'm working class. And so Coke really enjoyed helping me create executive profile because, you know, if I showed up in Brazil, the Brazilians felt that I was like them. If I showed up in India, the Indians felt that I was like them. If I showed up in Europe, the Europeans felt that I was like them.

And if I showed up in America, the Americans were like, no idea what he's saying, but he's saying it with that accent we'll buy it.

And so, you know, I was successfully used by Coca Cola Atlanta as this poster child for diversity.

And then America, the beautiful, this incredible body of work that we did whilst I was SVP of marketing in Coke, North America, that campaign was really about once again, depicting the ever changing faces of the American family and how beautiful the ever changing faces of the American family was.

And so we found authentic families, took the America the Beautiful, that incredible, incredible song, and found 13 year old choir girls to sing that song in their native language and then put it all together over this beautiful vignette spot.

One of the families that we wanted to portray was a same sex family. Two guys with their two kids, and they're in a roller skating rink. And there was a beautiful little vignette of the two guys holding hands, and you could see that there were two wedding rings on the hands. To me that was really symbolic of, You know, a proper union that was every bit as strong as a heterosexual family and their union.

So it was important to me that that little vignette stayed in the ad. And I remember taking it to my boss at the time and she said, Jonathan, I love this spot but we're not having the wedding rings.

And I was like, why are we not having the wedding rings? Well, gay marriage is so political and that's going to cause us to have very uncomfortable conversations with some of our bottlers and some of our retailers, so take it out.

And then we started to have a conversation about gay lifestyle and some terrible things were said from a place of. naivety and ignorance, but some terrible things were said. I got up and said, you know what, I can't be used by the Coca Cola company in this way, because clearly there is a discomfort with the lifestyle that I'm living. And, and this means a lot to me. So. I can't work here. I can't work on this.

And this was like three weeks out of Super Bowl. And, and so I kind of go, I'm done. And I get in my car and I drive home and I sit down with my husband and said, well, I walked out on the job today. And he goes, why? Because I'm not going to be able to get the same sex wedding rings in the America, the beautiful spot.

And my husband looked at me and he said, Jonathan is the battle, the wedding rings or keeping the same sex family in the spot in the first place? Because if you keep the same sex family in the spot in the first place, you will still be the first advertiser that's ever put a same sex family in the Super Bowl.

So that's the history. The wedding rings are not the history. And he was so right. You know, sometimes you've just got to take counsel from somebody can be much more objective.

And so I went back into Coke the next day and I was like, right, can I help to make this work.? But what was interesting on the night that that campaign aired was how much of a precursor the public reaction to America the Beautiful was in politics and the rise of Trump and MAGA.

I was so, so surprised at the level, the volume of hatred that erupted on social media because people were offended that the Coca Cola company would showcase Jewish families and Arab families and extended Mexican families and same sex families under this beautiful soundtrack of America the Beautiful. But in order to make it culturally significant, we'd recorded it in the languages of the families that you were watching.

And you know, I got one tweet from somebody which was, Hey, Mildenhall, you're black, you're gay, you're British. Why don't you fuck off and stop messing around with the American national anthem? And I'm sorry for the expletive, but that was the text.

And my response was, yes, I'm all those things, but this is not the American National Anthem so therefore your intelligence is not something that I need to care about.

I share that because that was the first time, and that was just one of many, many social media attacks that I got. But I did realize that there is a level of ignorance and fear in this country that even brands like Coca Cola cannot kind of help unite people over.

But then I also got a tweet from Vice President Biden who said, you know thank you very much for depicting the true beauty of the American people. So, you know it was the bookends of that campaign.

The one thing that I will say, credit to the Coca Cola company because it was the opening ceremony of the Olympics the weekend after Super Bowl that year.

And we had the choice of either running America the Beautiful again, as it was, or replacing it with some other copy. And the good leadership team at the Coca Cola company at the time decided to stay in the belly of this horrendous conversation and rerun America the Beautiful as part of the opening ceremony for the Olympics.

What was fascinating is when Coke did that the second time, the hatred stopped, because people were like, Coke's not listening to the hate, they're just getting behind the positive, they're not listening to it. And so, sometimes a brand has to do things a couple of times to shut down the naysayers. And that's great evidence.

when Coke ran that spot just a week later at the Olympics people that all, everybody was just like, Coke stands by these values. It stands by this, these families and is going to continue to run that campaign. And then the beautiful thing is in 2015. or 16, when I was helping oversee the launch of Airbnb's Super Bowl debut, Coke actually ran that spot for the third time.

And what was so funny is I was in the control room at Airbnb briefing my team about everything that they will expect when the Airbnb spot goes live, and, all of a sudden I heard, Oh, beautiful in the background. And I was like, It's somebody winding me up. Turn that off. And they were like, no, we're not winding you up.

This is being played on air right now. And I was like, Coca Cola is rerunning that spot? So we made history, made history because Coca Cola is the only brand in the world to run a Superbowl spot twice.

Ling Yah: I think you're the only CMO to have two Superbowl ads to play at the same time, within seconds of each other.

Jonathan Mildenhall: That's right.

That's absolutely right.

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Quite the history. You spoke of Airbnb, and I read that in your first conversation with Brian Chesky, you actually asked him, how serious are you about brand and how serious are you about marketing?

And in seven minutes, you decided the answer was good enough to leave Coca Cola for this tiny little startup that most people hadn't heard of.

What did he say that was so compelling?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Well, you've got to remember that, you know, when you have Coca Cola and you're a marketer, you're the king and queen of the castle because Coca Cola is a marketing driven organization. And when you're a marketer at a tech company, at best, you're a stepchild.

There's no king and queen status, you are the stepchild, product is king, engineering is king. And I was looking at Airbed and Breakfast, as it was called at the time, and I was like, it's not as big as HomeAway, it's not as old as VRBO, it's a property rental platform being founded by two designers and an engineer.

I'm spending at Coke 1. 2 billion a year on marketing. This company is only worth a billion dollars a year on marketing and its global marketing budget, including policy PR brand and performance. It's global budget is 25 million. None of this is successful career management from a traditional perspective.

So Brian, I am so delighted that you reached out to me. I'm happy to come to San Francisco and meet with you, but you need to know that I'm going to be interviewing you as hard as you're interviewing me, because, you know, I really need to understand if they're there for a marketer like me.

And so Brian and I met and yeah, it was really, really interesting because he hadn't yet really figured out what the big idea for Airbnb was, and there were a number of things that he and the leadership team were playing with.

And he said to me, I said, so why does Airbnb exist? And he says, well, you know, we, we genuinely believe that when you travel on Airbnb, you travel like a human.

And I remember saying to him, well, Brian, that is really, really patronizing because you're suggesting that people are not having human experiences unless they're traveling on Airbnb, we can't build a brand out of that.

And he got slightly more agitated and he said, Well, you know, the truth is that, you know, you travel on Airbnb and you travel like a local. And I said, Okay, that's better. That's better. I like that. Seems a little bit functional, but I do like it. But you talk about having a double sided marketplace and traveling like a local seems to exclude what hosts would get out of it.

And Brian lost it with me, because I was kind of winding up a little bit, and he, he literally started kind of almost pointing his finger and he said, I don't know Jonathan, but I do know that when you travel in an Airbnb versus staying in a hotel you get a greater sense of belonging.

And I was like, Brian, belonging. Belonging is going to prove to be as valuable to Airbnb as happiness has been to the Coca Cola company.

And I could tell he looked at me and he was like, what's just happened to you marketing to me now? And I, and I literally went off on one and I just said, no, think about it, Brian. When we were cavemen, we didn't sit around a campfire looking for happiness. Happiness is a much more recent condition of the human need. When we're cavemen, we sat around a fire looking for belonging.

When a baby is born for the first time and it naturally crawls its way up to its mother's breasts and its mother hugs it for the first time, that's belonging. So, you know, whether we're cavemen or whether we're infants or whether we're mothers, belonging is a primary driver of humankind.

And I could tell he was like, this is a marketer that thinks like no other marketer because we're having conversations about infants and cavemen. Then the conversation was Brian, I could help the world care about Airbnb if you can design belonging to be an integrable part of the overall experience.

Our initial conversation, which was calendared for an hour, ran for three hours, and the final two hours of the conversation, two and a half hours of the conversation, is, was all around extracting Brian's ideas for belonging, me adding my ideas for belonging. And, you know, in that meeting, I knew that my job, my, my role for the next few years was to get the world to care about this young CEO, tech founder, designer, who genuinely saw that Airbnb could gift the world.

This sense of belonging and given what I just experienced at Coke, where I saw this underbelly of fear and hatred of different cultures, etc.

I was like, Oh, right. Okay. My work is done at Coke, because I cannot be more provocative with the brand than I've been. But this guy. He's building something that is the antidote to a lot of the woes that we're seeing around the world, which is suspicion and fear and strangers.

And I knew that I could go there. Okay. I accept I'm in marketing at a tech company. I'm going to be the stepchild, but he's the co he's the father of this brand. I want to be the co parent for a while. And I know that I can get the world to care about what he believes in. And we did.

Ling Yah: Now, previously when we were talking about Coca Cola and you called your mom and you said, Oh look, I've made it. And she cries. When you moved to Airbnb, your mom thought you were moving to San Fran to open a bed and breakfast. I suppose she cried in a very, very different way.

How did you then go to this place and essentially built an Olympic marketing team such that in 2016, your team won every single marketing award that was in your industry?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah leaving the Coca Cola company, moving to Airbnb was considered career suicide by many people. Not least my mom, who had bragging rights on one of her sons because everybody knew what the Coca Cola company was.

I actually flew my mom out to San Francisco. For my first week at Airbnb. So she could actually walk into the offices and see that they were fantastic. And it was a proper business cause that was really, really important to me. I didn't want my mom to think that this was professional suicide. And what was really, really interesting when I got to Airbnb, a total United budget integrated budget at 25 million a very random bunch of.

Professionals in the marketing department because they hadn't had kind of proper leadership and and I was, I felt so liberated because I could. Build a team, processes, tech stack, all what I wanted it to be. I didn't have to actually kind of be encumbered by systems and processes that I faced at the Coca Cola company.

Well, after six weeks, I was missing everything about the Coca Cola company because I needed systems and structure and process and data. And and so that was a learning for me. You always think the grass is greener on the other side, but there's some things that you have, and then when they're taken away, you realize quite how important that they are.

But it was important to me that I was able to recruit really, really talented execs in various domains under the vision for Airbnb, but also under my vision for marketing. And my first vision deck for marketing at Airbnb had audacious things in it.

I mean, there was a slide that Brian Chesky had given me, which was the Nike swoosh, the Apple logo, the Disney signature, the Coca Cola contour, but on the question mark, Airbnb.

The value of that being in my marketing vision slide was, you know, we are serving Brian Chesky and his vision for Airbnb.

And his vision for Airbnb transcends the travel category. You know, all three of the founders, they want to create something that's as iconic as Nike, Apple, or Disney. And so I would put these audacious references in.

You know, I want Harvard Business School to be writing case studies about Airbnb. I want us to win Creative Marketer of the Year. I want us, and so I had all of these audacious goals. But at the same time, I also wanted us to build our reputation as the most impactful and efficient marketing org on the planet.

Booking. com that year was investing 2. 6 billion a year on marketing. We had 25 million a year on marketing. I needed every single dollar of Airbnb spend to feel like a thousand dollars if I was going to be successful.

And so, you know , that vision, yes, it's exciting. Yes, it's inspirational, but the expectation of anybody that was going to leave a kind of reasonably comfortable corporate job and come and join me.

And people knew that it was going to be hard work there was no hiding. There was no space for ordinary. Our strategic thinking needed to be robust and courageous. Our creative thinking needed to be surprising and provocative. And I needed everybody to come and bring 140 percent each and every day.

Ling Yah: You said before that 25 percent of these people didn't make it. What about those who did make it? What were some of the qualities that they have?

Jonathan Mildenhall: The people that make it under my leadership, people who have a huge amount of curiosity. So they see everything as a learning experience. They have a huge belief in the power of brand. And so they're comfortable stretching the purpose, the activation, the intention of brand. They're very collaborative and open minded.

Life is too short to work with people that, that can't generate energy and ideas and others. And they take. the distorted reality that leaders like Brian Chesky and I kind of offer and turn it into reality.

It's weird, Ling. Cause I am always surprised when somebody accepts a job working for me. And I'm always grateful that somebody accepts the job because they know that it's going to be hard because I don't want to do mediocre work.

Ling Yah: We've spoken about lots of people who have essentially influenced you personally, also your career. You have worked for many incredible female bosses like Wendy Clark, Esther, Cindy, Sarah. You said before you've taken parts of their DNA and stolen them.

I wonder having stolen all this DNA, who is Jonathan Mildenhall, the leader and what can other people learn from that?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Yeah, I'm very clear now and it took me a long time to be clear on what I call my bookend values. And this is something that I'd encourage everybody listening to really take time out and think about.

But over the years I've realized that I am driven by two things. One is humanity and my desire to show up as the best human being I can possibly be. And that sounds trite, but it's really hard to do. You know, there are times when you just want to tell people to just suck it up and fall in line

But I need to do that with empathy and compassion and intimacy and help people feel recognized. So, but being a really, really good human being is one of my bookend values, and being as creative as I can possibly be is another one of my bookend values.

So people know that in order to get the best out of me, I need them to show up with decent humanity and extreme curiosity for creative excellence.

And the bridge between both of those is kind of a high performance culture. Because I genuinely believe that you can be really, really creative, but you can be a bit of an asshole. And ultimately, people are not going to want to stay in that culture. Or you can be a really, really lovely human being, but you won't fight for creativity.

And yeah, I think that's going to be an uninspired culture. So, I use high performance as a benchmark bookended by humanity and creativity, because I do genuinely believe that for me and the teams and the brands that I've served, that is the way that you create the biggest impact in market and build the most empowering and stimulating culture inside an organization.

Ling Yah: You stepped up in a very different way as a leader in 2018, when you started working with Neil to launch the 21st century, your own company. What was the drive behind that?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Mm-Hmm. You know, after four years of being at Airbnb I was exhausted. And, and I was approached by Dara Uber. He'd just gone into be the chief executive Uber.

He and I had dinner a couple of times. 'cause, you know, he wanted my point of view on the brand. And I said to him, I said, look, Dara I don't wanna be anybody else's. CMO, but if I set up a consultancy, would Uber be a founding client? And Dara just had the grace to say yes in a kind of non committal way.

And so I called Neil and I said to Neil, he was the Chief strategic officer at Shire, and they've done all of this great work for Airbnb here in the US and around the world. And I said to Neil, I said, this is a weird proposition. But I'd like you to come and be the co founder in a company that we haven't yet founded.

But if we found it, then I think we could get Uber and Pinterest as our founding clients. And so Neil a lady called Alexander Damani joined me to open up 21st Century brand. And within the first 12 months, we were billing over $8 million. We had 35 consultants.

I mean, it was the dizziest of times. We all felt so so excited and it was some of the happiest months of my career. Walking into an office that you'd decorated that's full of people that you'd handpicked. Everybody was kind of living up to humanity and creativity in equal measure.

And I feel very, very proud of everything that 21st century brand has become. There's something incredible sitting around a kitchen table, writing values, putting them on the walls. And going right now, they're just words but could these words really turn into a human experience for anybody that works with 21st century brand?

And could these words turn into a range of products that clients would find incredibly valuable and would be prepared to buy? And going through that experience from white boarding in my kitchen to actually walking into a room in this state if I have consultants and they're all really interesting, doing interesting things.

It was the most rewarding period of my career. Hands down.

Ling Yah: I find that when people step out, do something that's very crazy, unconventional, there's always this serendipitous moments that happen. Magical moments.

I wonder what was some of the most magical ones that happened when you stepped up and became essentially an entrepreneur.

Jonathan Mildenhall: You realize that as an entrepreneur you're both a repellent of certain people and a magnet for certain people. I loved the people that came out and came towards Neil and I, as 21st century brands profile continued to grow.

And I'm very proud of the fact that the biggest source of business referrals that we got was not from the marketing community, it was not from the founder community.

It was actually from the investment community. So that was a huge surprise to me that the money people were the ones saying to founders, you've now just raised at this valuation, or you're gearing up for an IPO the company that you need to work with is 21st century brand because they will help ensure that your business model, your purpose, and your go to market and the internal values are all tightly aligned that will drive accelerated growth and ongoing efficiencies.

And when I had the investor firms making those recommendations, I knew that there was something very, very special about 21st century brand. And I feel very proud of the fact that we now do strategic consulting for Several investor firms about their own brands and how they manage their own communities.

So it's been incredibly validating that the financial mind continues to advocate for the strategic and creative minds of 21st century brands.

Ling Yah: It's been five years and over 70 companies served, and you've just announced that you've sold a controlling stake to Anthony Friedman's holding company. What was the story behind that, and what can we expect further?

Jonathan Mildenhall: You know, Anthony is a very, very remarkable man. He's one of the brightest. toughest financially astute negotiators that I've ever had the pleasure of working with.

He's also one of the most integrity based creative entrepreneurs that I've ever had the pleasure of working with. And Anthony and my relationship goes back about 10 years or so.

I first met him when I was at Coke, and I was on business in Sydney. You know, under Neil's leadership as the global CEO of 21st Century Brand, antony and Neil started an independent relationship and through that, Antony started to get very interested in 21st century brand as a potential acquisition.

Now, Antony comes out of Havas. He's bought and sold a couple of companies to Havas. But he decided that, you know, with his wealth and his network of wealth that he wants to set up a new holding company, that holding company is called Common Interest. And the vision for common interest is to help clients earn a disproportionate share of commercial success through occupying a disproportionate share of popular culture.

If I'm frustrated about anything with 21st Century brand is Wes Hardcore strategy. We didn't want to get into a competitive situation against some of the top advertising agencies, content agencies, influencer agencies, et cetera. And so my frustration is we, we, we write this new strategy for a client.

We get the client to feel very, very galvanized and confident about the value and the momentum that this new strategy would create. And then we give it over to agencies that, you know, don't necessarily always think like 21st century brand would think.

And so under Anthony's vision, 21st century brand is the first acquisition and he's intent on making, you know, up to a dozen acquisitions over the next two years.

The 21st century brand will be A feeder platform into an ecosystem of very progressive, creatively minded companies that either through data or through influences. Or through content or through traditional advertising a media or product placement will all be focused on helping clients and that disproportionate share of pop culture and ultimately commercial success.

I feel slightly intimidated, because you know 21st century brand will be a huge driver of the shape of common interest, but I feel. That I found a professional home that feels so right for everybody at 21st Century Brand. And I've also found a professional partner in Antony that is going to allow me to take everything that I believe in and elevate and apply that at a completely different level.

Now we can wrap up this conversation without talking about your book, A Colorful View from the Top. What is the story behind that? And how did you essentially curate the list of people that you featured?

Yeah, colorful view from the top. I have to take everybody back to the awful weekend where the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd.

I remember being in such pain that weekend because physically I was having the inverse of goosebumps. It was as if every hair follicle in my body was pricking my body and my skin was itchy and achy and sore.

Part of the insane contradictions that I was experiencing that weekend was my babies, my little brown skinned girl named Dominica and my little white skinned boy named Oliver were swaddled up in a crib facing each other.

There's the innocence of infants. The innocence of racial harmony. A little brown girl and a little white boy, just snuggling each other and facing each other as I'm watching a white policeman murder a black American.

To see those two things simultaneously was more than I thought that I was capable of taking.

And on the Monday, I had a conversation with Neil, my co founder, and I said, Neil, I can't stay in America. I don't want to stay in America. I don't want my daughter to grow up with such hatred. I think I'm going to come back to the UK. I don't know what that's going to do to the company, but Neil was like, no, Jonathan.

I've been thinking about it too, and we're not going to you know, write another outraged post on social media. We should do something. We should start to work really, really hard to change the narrative of black and brown people. So why don't we do book? And immediately my response was, oh, that's a really good idea.

We should call the book a colorful view from the top and we should find black and brown excellence. And the condition is that they can't abuse fame as a platform to build their businesses.

These are people who build interesting businesses or gone all the way up the corporate ladder, but without using fame or celebrity as the accelerator.

Immediately I got as animated as I'm being with you now, because he gave me a creative idea that we could get behind that I thought would be really, really purposeful.

And so a colorful view from the top, it's 21 extraordinary voices of black and brown excellence in business. We basically wanted to make sure that we were casting our research net really, really wide and looking in surprising places for stories of inspiration.

And we were able to get 21 luminaries to share. Really, I didn't want this to feel like reading somebody's LinkedIn profile where everything is constantly being up and to the right.

I wanted this to be about the real hard personal struggles, the vulnerabilities, the insecurities, the shame. of being different that has turned into the asset of being excellence for many people.

I'm really, really proud of this work. This is a non profit initiative, so every dollar we make selling the book goes into a fund where we're going to be distributing this book free of charge to every single secondary school in the UK.

Because I want young people to have . Inspirational source of stories, an inspirational body of role models that young people might follow, as I've done with all of these incredible women and men that I've worked for, they might take a little bit out of my story and a little bit out of somebody else's story and a little bit out of somebody else's story to help plot their own story that is going to transform their personal trajectory.

I couldn't be more proud of the community that is now a colorful view from the top, and I couldn't be more proud of the, just the quality of writing and inspiration that this book represents.

Ling Yah: And I will certainly leave all the information required if you want to purchase the Kindle version or the physical version.

I actually have a question from someone you would recognize who wanted to ask me to ask you this. So let me play this for you.

Eric Toda: What's up, Ling and Jonathan? I hope you're having a great conversation. And I just wanted to drop in just to say hi, introduce myself.

If you weren't listening before during my episode, my name is Eric Toda. I'm a marketing executive at Metta and I actually worked for Jonathan between 2015 and 2017 at Airbnb.

During my time with Jonathan, I actually learned a ton about marketing, kind of about leadership, where Jonathan mentored me, coached me, and gave me some necessary tough love.

But my question to you, Jonathan, as you start to talk about how you inspire younger marketers and the next generation of CMOs is what's one piece of advice that you would give to any aspiring CMO before they took the seat?

All right, I'll leave you to it. Talk soon.

Jonathan Mildenhall: That's beautiful. Ling. Thank you very much. And thank you, Eric.

It's really, really interesting that you raise this issue. Because 21st century brand, In association with Cannes Lion are launching next year, the CMO Thrive Guide. And the CMO Thrive Guide is a body of work that is designed to help first time CMOs be more successful in their first 12 months.

There's going to be lots and lots of different organizations that are going to be contributing to this.

Jonathan Mildenhall: But the first thing that I would say to any CMO is In parallel, fluency in the business, you have to learn to speak C E O talk. You have to learn to speak C F O talk and you have to learn to speak C P O talk.

So chief product, chief finance, chief exec. Be fluent in their language as you start to draft the vision and the strategy for marketing.

The one thing that is true is nobody in the organization will have a strong point of view on the total value Proposition that marketing can bring to an organization.

And so you as a CMO have to restate the total value proposition. So everybody feels good about the dollars and the head count and the strategic approach to marketing, but fluency in finance, fluency at the chief execs office and fluency in product. You have to do that whilst you're setting out this new and elevated vision for marketing at the company.

Ling Yah: And I have a final question from the listener as well.

Pearl Lim: Hi, Jonathan. I'm Pearl, host of Rebel Curiosities podcast. I'm also an ex marketeer, and I would love to hear your views about the role of marketing since you started to where you are now, how it has evolved over the years, and probably another controversial question of what matters more to you?

Is it brand marketing or is it customer marketing?

Thanks.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Beautiful questions.

Okay marketing is more complex than ever before. There is an avalanche of new platforms, new technologies, new codes that advertisers and marketers should follow. So it's so much more complicated than it ever was. But the essence of marketing will never change.

And that is that as marketers, you have the responsibility and the opportunity of deciding what stories a company should tell to whom.

And I just love that even though we're overwhelmed with technology, we're overwhelmed with data, we're overwhelmed with different platforms, we're overwhelmed with audience fragmentation, the truth of marketing hasn't changed.

And that is telling the most compelling story In the most creative way to the most fertile of audiences. And I love that. Now, when you talk about brand marketing or customer marketing, we can even talk about brand marketing or growth marketing. We can even talk about business to consumer or business to business.

Where do I sit on all of that? At the end of the day, it is a human being with deep seated, human emotions and human needs. That is receiving the message and the one thing that I know for sure, and it doesn't matter the marketing domain from growth to customer to business to consumer.

One thing that I know for sure is that human beings respond more effectively with stories that are well told and stories that are well placed.

And the role of marketers today is to figure out. How to tell those best stories in the right place, at the right cost to get the desired action that you need. And because at the end of the day, it stays that simple. I will always, always love this industry.

Ling Yah: Jonathan, it has been such a pleasure to have had you on.

Wish I could keep you for another three hours, but I know that's not possible. So I will end with the same questions I ask all of my guests. And the first is this.

Do you feel like you have found your why?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Absolutely. I have found my why. And my why isn't to continue building other brands. My why is to work with CMOs and help CMOs become Olympic gold medalists.

And, and so I do a lot of coaching with CMOs. And I find nothing more rewarding than watching a CMO grow in their own confidence, courage, and conviction as a result of the time that we spend together.

Ling Yah: And what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?

Jonathan Mildenhall: When I think about legacy now, as a father of a set of four year old twins, it's everything from leaving stories that will inspire them to be the most, you empowered, creative and courageous human beings that they can possibly be.

My legacy is to try and leave the marketing industry with a little bit more confidence and conviction about the role that it plays. And my legacy is to leave a body of creative work that in a hundred years time. When there was somebody else sat in an archive at the Coca Cola company, that they're pulling out my work and going, this was really powerful in the day, because this is what it was trying to do in the cultural context.

Ling Yah: And where do you think are the most important qualities of a successful person?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Deep rooted authenticity, somebody that can withstand political swirls within organizations, somebody that can withstand cultural swirls outside of organizations.

I am so authentic to my truth now.

And I am so conscious of my values of humanity and creativity that I won't actually let any body, any work, any project compromise any of that.

It took me a long time to find my authenticity, but now I've found it, I know the power that comes from that.

Ling Yah: And where can people go to find out more about what you are doing and support everything that you'll be involved in?

Jonathan Mildenhall: I'm heavily involved on LinkedIn. It's probably my most accessible social media channel. 21stcenturybrand. com will always have the latest body of work that we're involved in.

And then if people are interested in seeing my beautiful family, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Ling Yah: Any last words before we wrap up?

Jonathan Mildenhall: Thank you, Ling. You're a young female entrepreneur building a platform of intelligence and a platform of inspiration. I know that it is hard and so thank you for your tenacity and your courage to do this work. I think it's really important. And I'd just like to say thank you for everybody listening in.

I know there's 101 things that you could be doing and I hope that this has been time well spent for you.

Ling Yah: It certainly has for me and thank you, Jonathan. I've been longing to have you on since I first heard of you from Eric over a year ago and I cannot believe I actually had you on. So thank you for your generosity and time.

Jonathan Mildenhall: Not at all. It's really my pleasure. Thank you.