Airbnb hires Unilever exec to lead marketing in Asia

Schuecking joined Airbnb a few weeks ago and leads marketing for all of APAC, based out of Singapore, the company confirmed. He will report into the headquarters in San Francisco.

He has held several marketing manager roles at Unilever where he most recently led brand development projects in Southeast Asia and Australasia for Dove, Lifebuoy and Vaseline.

Schuecking joins the company at a time when it is expanding presence in the region and boosting marketing. Airbnb is looking to hire as many as 12 people in Singapore including business development and marketing staff.

In May this year, the firm launched its first global campaign across nine markets including Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China on digital and mobile. The campaign explaining Airbnb’s model ran on AFAR, YouTube, Dwell, Lonely Planet, BBC, Facebook, Twitter and Buzzfeed. This was a considerable departure for a brand that typically relied on direct response and Facebook ads to market itself.

The holiday rental site is seeing record growth in Asia. South Korea, for example, has grown more than 400 per cent in outbound travelers on Airbnb and 300 per cent in inbound. The inbound numbers are even higher for Japan, which saw 400 per cent growth. China though remains the prized jewel, accounting for the largest share of global tourism.

Earlier this year, Airbnb named Jonathan Midenhall as global CMO. Midenhall was Coke’s former VP integrated marketing communication and design excellence for North America.