Heading up brand and consumer marketing, Heather Freeland joins LinkedIn from her role as chief brand officer at Adobe.
LinkedIn has appointed its first chief brand officer to oversee brand and consumer marketing, as the professional networking site looks to take its brand communications “to the next level”.
Heather Freeland joins from Adobe where she served as chief brand officer for almost three years, alongside her position on Spotify’s CMO Advisory Council.
A former managing director at PR firm Widmeyer Communications, Freeland served as senior vice-president at Digitas for over six years before departing in 2008 to join MTV Networks Digital as general manager of the firm’s vertical ad network business.
Two years later, she was appointed senior vice-president of marketing and sales development at MTV Networks Digital. She founded the company’s marketing and strategy team, devising the digital brand strategy and co-leading the product marketing teams.
After a stint as CMO and vice-president of brand marketing at off-price ecommerce company Gilt City, Freeland spent seven years as head of global marketing communications at Meta.
Founder of the social media giant’s internal global creative and digital agency The Guild, her remit spanned creative, digital, brand strategy, global marketing programmes and project management. Freeland also led on the launch of Meta’s mobile ads, ads in News Feed, Custom Audiences product and video advertising.
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In 2019, she joined ridesharing app Lyft as vice-president of marketing, a job Freeland says she applied for via LinkedIn.
Managing a team of 150, Freeland headed up brand marketing, product marketing, partner marketing, creative and marketing operations across all lines of business from ridesharing to bikes and scooters. She spent over three years at Lyft before joining Adobe in 2022.
Posting on LinkedIn about her appointment, Freeland described herself as a brand fan and firm believer in the power of marketing to tell “powerful stories”.
“I couldn’t be more excited to elevate LinkedIn’s bold vision to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce,” she adds.
“And I’m thrilled to be reunited with the inimitable [chief marketing and strategy officer] Jessica Jensen and get started with this incredible team to take the LinkedIn brand to the next level together.”
LinkedIn revenue increased 9% year-on-year in the three months to 30 June. The site now has 1.2 billion members, following four consecutive years of double-digit user growth. According to parent company Microsoft, comments on LinkedIn are up more than 30% this year, with video uploads rising by over 20%.
In April, the business reported its LinkedIn Premium product had seen 75% quarter-on-quarter subscriber growth in the three months to 31 March.
From a product perspective, LinkedIn is ramping up its focus on artificial intelligence with the rollout of an AI Hiring Assistant for recruiters and investing in video – one of the site’s fastest growing formats – with the expansion of its BrandLink offering. AT&T Business, IBM, SAP and ServiceNow recently collaborated with LinkedIn on the debut season of four shows, mixing exclusive content from creators and publishers aimed at small businesses, founders and CEOs.
