Profile of Uber's chief brand officer, Bozoma Saint John, as she tries to restore the company's tarnished image
At a company full of challenging jobs, Bozoma Saint John surely has one of the toughest. As chief brand officer at Uber, her task is to try to get people to love a business …
Context & Ripple Effects
When Bozoma Saint John left Apple to become Uber's chief brand officer in mid-2017, the hire was pitched as the marquee move in a broader rehabilitation: CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was simultaneously recast as a diplomat and salesman repairing the company's image. Her brief was unusually blunt — get people to love a service they use but don't trust.
First-order effects
- Uber's reputation problem is now personified in one executive: Saint John owns the gap between how indispensable the app is and how little affection consumers feel for the company behind it.
Second-order effects
- The bet gets tested against Uber's own data — by 2019, despite an expensive PR push, internal sentiment tracking showed the brand languishing near its #DeleteUber lows, suggesting star-marketer hires alone don't move the number.
Third-order effects
- Saint John's exit after roughly a year to become Endeavor's CMO fits a pattern where high-profile reputation-fixing CMO roles prove short-lived, pushing companies toward the conclusion that brand recovery has to be earned through operational conduct rather than campaigns.
The trend: Crisis-hit platform companies are learning that importing star marketers from admired brands buys attention but not trust, shifting reputation work from campaigns back to product and conduct.