WeWork CMO Petula Lucey on repositioning the brand as a real estate company

WeWork’s chief marketing officer, Petula Lucey, says her task has been to help the business shed the excesses it became known for and present itself plainly as a real estate company.

“We’re not the kombucha-drinking, beer pong company,” she says.

From excess to restructuring

With private jets, boozy office parties, lavish retreats and a founder whose ambitions seemed limitless, WeWork once symbolised both the best and the most troubling sides of Silicon Valley startup culture.

Led by co-founder Adam Neumann, the shared office business became a worldwide phenomenon, promoting a vision of community, entrepreneurship and a new way of working. It was valued at $47bn at its 2019 peak. Behind that promise, however, the company was burning cash, taking on costly long-term leases and running a culture of excess that looked increasingly at odds with its finances.

The collapse of its planned IPO in 2019 exposed the extent of the problems. Neumann was removed, investors lost faith and WeWork became a byword for corporate indulgence, with its fall later dramatised in a TV series. The Covid lockdown finished the job, and by the time of its bankruptcy filing in November 2023 its reputation was badly damaged.

The business survived. Bankruptcy allowed a deep restructuring led by John Santora, the new chief executive, and Anant Yardi as chairman. It cut $2.9bn of debt, steadied operations and emerged with a smaller global footprint. It then needed to tell people.

For Lucey, that was a once-in-a-career marketing opportunity.

“For any marketer to be able to step in and to really influence the transformation of a business and a brand is incredible. I stepped into a business that was on the right path and needed some help,” she said. “The brand had undergone one of the most visible downfalls, visible restructuring and had public sentiment and trust eroded significantly.”

After around 18 months of near silence about its progress, the old story was the only one people remembered. “Silence about what’s happening with the business and brand only gives credibility to the last thing that was said,” she says.

Shedding the tech label

Lucey says rebuilding WeWork meant facing up to the image that made its name, without apologising for it. Its startup culture, sense of community and hospitality had set it apart from traditional office providers, but those same associations worked against it when trying to persuade large corporations that it was a dependable property partner.

“My job wasn’t to come and reinvent the brand, but it was to help shed some of the components that just were no longer consistent with who we are today,” she says.

That meant dropping the claim that WeWork was a technology company. The idea had helped it win over Silicon Valley founders in 2017 but carries no weight with Wall Street now. “[We had to] shed the former position and really embrace the reality of what we are, which is a real estate company.”

The new positioning underpins WeWork for Business, launched worldwide in July 2025 under the line ‘Made for Work. Built for Business.’

“It wasn’t meant to be clever. It just was meant to be clear, so that people understood who we are and what we do,” she says.

The campaign was also designed to show that WeWork offers more than coworking, providing flexible space, technology and services to everyone from sole entrepreneurs to multinationals.

A year on, Lucey is confident the work has made a difference. Global occupancy is 81%, rising above 90% in some markets including New York and Chicago. Growth is coming from both startups and established enterprises. About 120 Fortune 500 companies use WeWork, and 36% of the businesses on LinkedIn’s Top 50 Startups list for 2026 are based in its buildings.

Marketing on the hook for revenue

WeWork’s past marketing included a multi-day festival with a line-up closer to Coachella than a corporate away day, and the team was not set up to serve the company’s new commercial goals.

“They were optimizing for the channel, not for the business,” Lucey says. She split the function into strategic marketing and shared services, added a sharper focus on acquisition and performance, and made the biggest change of all by measuring the team on commercial results.

Marketing now accounts for nearly half of WeWork’s net new desk sales. Lucey says marketing-attributed revenue rose 25% year on year after WeWork for Business launched, and is up a further 16% so far this year.

“I’ve had former roles when there was no direct P&L ownership and it’s a very different world to come in when you’re on the hook for delivering desks and revenue,” she says.

The wider business has also improved. Lucey cites consecutive quarters of positive Ebitda and revenue of $2.3bn in 2025, up from $2.2bn in 2024, as proof the plan is working.

“We’ve really seen the narrative change, the headlines have started to change, our sales cycles have started to shorten and doors have started to open,” she says.

Modest budgets

To position WeWork as an authority on commercial property rather than a supplier of upmarket offices, Lucey has invested in tailored events for enterprise clients and workshops for startups. Another addition is Business Intelligence, a thought leadership platform that uses insight from WeWork’s global network, whose members number more than half a million, to show companies how workplace needs are shifting.

Her plans include more customer stories in its marketing, more thought leadership, and tests with YouTube and creator partnerships.

Lavish marketing stunts will not be returning. Lucey says budgets will stay modest and disciplined however much the company grows.

“I really believe that every investment that we make has a job, whether it’s demand or sales enablement, or revenue, or creating value. And if you can’t assign a job to that dollar, you shouldn’t be using it.”