The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Marketing

Uber slashes marketing headcount by 400 in a brutal bid to contain costs

Author

By John Glenday, Reporter

July 30, 2019 | 2 min read

Ride-hailing app Uber has moved to balance its books by slashing its global marketing team by approximately one-third, with 400 people losing their jobs in a bid to drain the red ink which threatens to submerge the business.

Uber

Uber slashes marketing headcount by 400 in brutal bid to contain costs

The transportation platform plans a broader restructuring of a smaller department of just 800 individuals as it seeks to streamline its profile across different audiences, products and locales.

Outlining his thinking in an email to staff chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi wrote: “We are not making these changes because marketing has become less important to Uber. The exact opposite is true: we are making these changes because presenting a powerful, unified, and dynamic vision to the world has never been more important.

“Many of our teams are too big, which creates overlapping work, makes for unclear decision owners, and can lead to mediocre results. As a company, we can do more to keep the bar high, and expect more of ourselves and each other.”

Uber lost just over $1bn over the first three months of the year alone according to its first published earnings report as a public company, just as revenue growth slows and compounding previous losses - illustrating the scale of the task at hand in turning the way to a profit.

The latest spate of departures follow the exit of Rebecca Messina after less than a year as chief marketing officer in June, a loss attributed at the time to moves to merge Uber’s marketing, communication and policy teams.

Marketing

Content created with:

Uber

Ãber means over, above, beyond. So if youâre going to call yourself Ãber youâre going to have to work very hard every day to live up to your name. Your service...

Find out more

More from Marketing

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +