On the heels of a major rebranding, The We Company has tapped a former residential brokerage specialist to oversee marketing for WeWork Labs.
Sources said the co-working giant hired Nicole Oge — who spearheaded flashy marketing campaigns at both Douglas Elliman and Town Residential — to lead marketing for its accelerator program.
WeWorkLabs, which re-launched last year, provides early-stage companies with desk space, mentorship and other resources.
The division currently has 32 locations around the world, but sources said there are “aggressive expansion plans” to more than triple that number in the near future.
Oge could not be reached for comment, but her LinkedIn profile reflected her new position as of Wednesday night.
Oge joined Elliman in 2014, leading a massive marketing push that coincided with Elliman’s expansion into Aspen and Los Angeles. Her vision was to turn Elliman into a lifestyle brand, and during her tenure the firm published glossy magazines and sponsored see-and-be-seen events.
Prior to joining Elliman, Oge was head of marketing for Town between 2011 and 2014, where she was instrumental in creating its “Look Up” campaign. Before that, she was a marketing specialist for Mercedes Benz and was global group director at Seventh Art Group, a real estate and hospitality marketing firm.
After leaving Elliman in 2016, Oge founded Labyrinth, a strategic marketing and branding agency.
WeWork rebranded itself as “The We Company” this week, after reports that Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group slashed its planned funding from $16 billion to $2 billion. The company, led by Adam Neumann, is consolidating its business into three main arms: it’s co-working division, WeWork, its co-living division, WeLive and WeGrow, which includes an elementary school, gym and coding academy.
In a new mission statement, the company said it aimed to “elevate the world’s consciousness,” which means accepting that it will be “in a constant state of self-discovery, self-growth and change.”
WeWork posted revenue of $1.2 billion during the first nine months of 2018, but spent twice as much and posted a net loss of $1.2 billion during the same period.