Airbnb on their big new innovation, in-housing creativity and brand led communication - Hiroki Asai

Summary

Uncensored CMO: Airbnb's Bold Leap into In-Housing Creativity and Brand-Led Communication

Podcast Information:

• Title: Uncensored CMO
• Host: Jon Evans
• Guest: Hiroki Asai, Chief Marketing Officer, Airbnb
• Episode Title: Airbnb on their big new innovation, in-housing creativity and brand led communication - Hiroki Asai
• Release Date: June 4, 2025

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Uncensored CMO, Jon Evans welcomes Hiroki Asai, the Chief Marketing Officer of Airbnb. The discussion delves into Airbnb's latest innovations, particularly their strategic shift towards in-housing creativity and emphasizing brand-led communication. The conversation offers valuable insights into how Airbnb navigated unprecedented challenges and reinvented its marketing approach.

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2. Hiroki Asai's Journey to Airbnb

Hiroki Asai shares his personal background, revealing a shared passion with Jon Evans: skateboarding. Growing up in Cupertino, California, during the late '80s, Hiroki was deeply influenced by the vibrant skateboarding culture, as reflected in publications like Thrasher magazine and the Bones Brigade. This early passion underscores his creative and dynamic approach to marketing.

Hiroki: "Recovering skateboarders. Recovering skateboarders, I'd like to say." [00:41]

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3. Navigating the Pandemic: Shift from Performance Marketing to Branding

Hiroki recounts joining Airbnb at the end of 2019, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began reshaping the global landscape. The pandemic resulted in an 80% loss in Airbnb's business within weeks, necessitating a swift pivot in strategy.

Hiroki: "It was a time to really kind of go back to the core of what Airbnb was about and rebuild it after that." [02:18]

Faced with the abrupt halt of performance marketing channels, Airbnb was compelled to experiment by cutting off all performance marketing—a move that surprisingly revealed that 80% of their traffic was organic. This realization highlighted the untapped potential of brand-focused strategies.

Hiroki: "Airbnb was not investing in brand. It was predominantly performance...brand was the opportunity to really remind people what Airbnb was about." [04:01]

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4. The Importance of Design in Airbnb's DNA

Design is integral to Airbnb's identity. With two of the three founders meeting in design school, the company's emphasis on creativity and aesthetic excellence is deeply embedded.

Hiroki: "Design is very much the design of the app, the graphic design, and it's also in the way that we think and approach problems." [06:47]

Airbnb champions an in-house approach to design, ensuring seamless collaboration between advertising, product design, and engineering teams. This integration fosters a cohesive and authentic brand narrative.

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5. Expanding Beyond Accommodations: Introducing Experiences and Services

Hiroki discusses Airbnb's strategic expansion into experiences and services, aiming to encapsulate the spirit of travel and authentic human connections that birthed the company.

Hiroki: "Airbnb is about the trip...it's about experiences and services and stays all together." [12:18]

These additions include categories like chefs, masseuses, trainers, and beauty services, positioning Airbnb as a comprehensive solution for travelers seeking both accommodation and personalized services.

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6. The Launch of Airbnb Originals

Airbnb Originals represents the company's foray into curated, authentic experiences across over 600 cities worldwide. This initiative focuses on delivering unique local experiences that go beyond traditional tourism.

Hiroki: "We wanted to offer something that's way deeper and unique and something that even a local would find interesting." [17:04]

Examples include exclusive tours led by individuals directly involved in significant local projects, such as the restoration of Notre Dame, providing guests with unparalleled insights and connections.

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7. Organizational Structure and Collaboration at Airbnb

A cornerstone of Airbnb's success is its concurrent design approach, fostering real-time collaboration across design, engineering, and marketing teams. This integrated method ensures that products are not only functional but also market-ready from the outset.

Hiroki: "We call it concurrent design rather than serial...thinking about the entire chain all at once." [10:40]

The organizational philosophy emphasizes "primary teams"—peer groups that collaborate horizontally, breaking down silos and enhancing overall efficiency and innovation.

Hiroki: "The primary team really deeply understands each other and what's involved." [25:55]

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8. Communicating the New Offerings

Airbnb's communication strategy for its new services and experiences centers around authenticity and magic in travel. The "Grand Adventure" brand spot encapsulates this vision, contrasting the serendipitous nature of traditional travel with the structured, checklist-driven modern experiences.

Hiroki: "Our experiences can bring that forward, and bring the magic back to travel." [27:41]

Leveraging social media and influencer collaborations, Airbnb aims to reach younger audiences who increasingly turn to platforms like Instagram for travel inspiration.

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9. Enhancing the Host Experience

Recognizing the critical role of hosts, Airbnb has revamped its host-side app to make onboarding effortless. The new tools allow hosts to easily create and manage their experiences, ensuring a high-quality and user-friendly interface akin to the guest experience.

Hiroki: "It's super easy. It's very, very simple to load in what your experience would be." [29:45]

This seamless integration not only attracts more hosts but also ensures that the quality of experiences remains consistently high across diverse locations.

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10. Key Marketing Insights and Advice

Concluding the discussion, Hiroki imparts essential advice for aspiring marketers:

1. Simplicity is Paramount: Strive to make everything as straightforward and user-friendly as possible, respecting the customer's limited time and attention.

   Hiroki: "Make everything really, really simple and respect the customer's time." [32:04]

2. Empathy and Human Connection: Emphasize the human, empathetic side of marketing, focusing on emotional appeal and genuine understanding of the customer.

   Hiroki: "Appealing to emotions and understanding the customer is crucial." [35:20]

3. Collaborative Mindset: Foster a low-ego, collaborative environment where cross-functional teams work seamlessly towards shared goals.

   Hiroki: "It takes a very, very open minded, very, very collaborative, very, very low ego type of person." [27:31]

Jon Evans echoes these sentiments, highlighting the importance of customer-centric approaches and firsthand engagement to glean actionable insights.

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Conclusion

Hiroki Asai's insights provide a compelling look into Airbnb's strategic evolution amidst global challenges. By prioritizing brand over performance metrics, emphasizing in-house design and creativity, and expanding into authentic local experiences, Airbnb is redefining the landscape of travel and hospitality. Marketers can draw valuable lessons from Airbnb's emphasis on simplicity, empathy, and cross-functional collaboration, underscoring the enduring power of authentic human connections in building a resilient and beloved brand.

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For more insights and detailed discussions on marketing strategies and innovations, subscribe to Uncensored CMO wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a review to help others discover the show!

Transcript

[Hiroki]

Foreign.

[John Evans]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored cmo. Now I'm here recording live from Airbnb summer release, and I'm joined by Hiroki, their cmo, to talk about some big product news and how they're going to deliver that to market. And a bit of the backstory about Airbnb and why brand building was so important to them. Hiroki has got so much experience. This is a fascinating story. You'll love it. Here it is. Hiroki, welcome to the show.

[Hiroki]

Thank you. Thank you. Happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

[John Evans]

That's wonderful to have you. And I've recently discovered we have a passion in common, which might surprise people listening and watching, but we're both skateboarders.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah. Recovering skateboarders. Recovering skateboarders, I'd like to say. Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Cupertino, California, which at the time, the late 80s, was when I grew up. Thrasher magazine and Bones Brigade was kind of the only. I mean, this was, you know, before we had the Internet. Well, you know. Yeah, it was exciting. It was dangerous. It was different. And so it was a big passion of mine when I was a kid.

[John Evans]

It was quite a scene, wasn't it? And it's nice that even Tony Hawk is, like, now an investor in brands like Liquid Death.

[Hiroki]

So, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah, things have changed. Skate parks are everywhere and, yeah, it's quite different now.

[John Evans]

Am I right? So you've even got a skate park in your house as well?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah. It's a ramp, a skate ramp. It's a modest skateboard ramp in our house. But it was. When we were remodeling it, it was actually my wife's idea, to be honest. My wife came up with it. She said, you know, why don't you just, like, reserve a room for a half pipe for you and the kids? And I was like, oh, my God. That's why I married you. You're brilliant.

[John Evans]

That is genius. Yeah, I think that's the ideal brief.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

One day. But tell me the story about how you ended up arriving at Airbnb. Cause you joined at quite an interesting time in kind of the brand's evolution, didn't you?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah. I started there at the end of 2019, and we were just hearing about this thing happening over in China. It wasn't like, you know, a little bit scary, but not major news yet. And then, yeah, I believe it was March of 2020, you know, right after I joined was when the pandemic hit. And you know, all hell kind of broke loose. And it was, you know, as Brian said, it was 80% of the business got lost in just a matter of weeks.

[John Evans]

Wow.

[Hiroki]

It was pretty crazy.

[John Evans]

What did you do in that time? I mean, how could I presume you didn't know how quickly a recovery would happen, when it was going to happen?

[Hiroki]

No, no, it was just all hands on deck to really try and figure out how to keep the company afloat, what parts of the company would be left. But it was also, you know, a time to really kind of go back to the core of what Airbnb was about and the core of its business and, and, and rebuild it after that.

[John Evans]

Now, one of the sort of famous, you know, lessons from that time that I know lots of marketers listing will kind of refer to was that you. You turned off a lot of your performance marketing channels, didn't you, but you kept investing in the brand even without anything necessary to sell?

[Hiroki]

Yes. Yes.

[John Evans]

How did that work?

[Hiroki]

What's interesting is, you know, with the pandemic, we had to suspend all spend, basically. And marketing is, of course, gets cut. And, you know, like, how often do you get to do that experiment where you completely cut off all your performance marketing just to see what happens, you know, and so we were kind of forced there, cut off all the performance marketing, and it. The majority of our organic traffic remained. And so it was a big sign to us that we can take a different approach. And Airbnb at the time wasn't investing in brand. It was predominantly performance. And so I think one of the biggest problems was that it was not in control of its own narrative, and it did not have the opportunity to tell its own story. So it was largely being run and told by the press and a lot of work. The messaging was really reactive to what was happening. And so, yeah, brand was the opportunity to really, you know, remind people what Airbnb was about and really remind people what authentic travel could look like.

[John Evans]

Now, talking of story, I hadn't actually heard Brian tell the origin story until today, actually, which is. Would you mind saying it? Because it's really quite fascinating. Sure. It almost links in to some of the news you've got today.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah, you know, it definitely predates me, but it was, you know, he and his roommate from art school actually had trouble paying rent, and there was a design conference in town, and so they decided, hey, why don't we, you know, rent out the rooms in their apartment? Which they did. And they had three designers join them. And, you know, what's kind of Interesting is it was the original concept of Airbnb to, you know, to have these people come and stay. But also they spent a lot of time running around the city, showing them the city, taking them to the mission to get tacos and doing all this stuff, which is actually kind of about experiences. It's actually the birthplace of experiences. So the original Airbnb was about a place to stay, but also things to do in San Francisco.

[John Evans]

Yeah. And there's a lovely phrase used as well, which was the people came as strangers, but they left as friends.

[Hiroki]

Yes.

[John Evans]

Which is a lovely kind of insight into humanity, isn't it? Those experiences we have when we meet, we travel and we discover people that we've got a connection with and we share those experiences.

[Hiroki]

Yeah. That's what's so amazing about Airbnb is it's not a company where you're creating a product that's a tool. You're actually. Actually putting people in other people's homes, you know, and so you're dealing with humans and humans together, you know, and the magic that happens from it. And it's so much closer to humanity and the human experience than most companies.

[John Evans]

It's a very. It's a very. Another, I think another quote he was talking about was 99% of people on the planet are good, aren't they? And it's a. We read so much negativity on social media where our feeds are full of bad stories, but you travel, you meet people. It really restores your faith in humanity and how lovely everybody is.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, I mean, you know, travel, I think, is. It's one of the most optimistic and it's one of the most aspirational things you could do. It's like, you know, when people say they're going to retire, what are you going to do? I'm going to travel. You know, if you win the lottery, what are you going to do? I'm going to travel. You know, everyone, like, loves to travel. I think it's when you're at your best. It's when you're at your most open minded, you know, it's when you're at your most friendliest. You know, you have, you know, if you ever made friends and travel, when you're traveling, those friends kind of tend to be, you know, stick around for years and years. And so I think, you know, people are at their best and most open when they travel. And so I think the connection that happens there is magical.

[John Evans]

Now, something I associate certainly with using Airbnb and the communication you do is the beauty of the design and the integrity of the design, which is, you know, it's quite a lovely aesthetic and quite a pleasing aesthetic. How important is design, you know, to the brand?

[Hiroki]

Oh, super important. I mean, it's deep in the DNA because the two. Two of the three founders met in design school and did study design. And so we're really lucky that we have a CEO founder leader like Brian, who is definitely a right brain thinker, and so he definitely understands the value of design and creativity, and so that works its way into the DNA of the whole company. But for us, the way I think about it is design is very much the design of the app, the design of the graphic design and things that we do, but it's also in the way that we think and approach problems. And it's also even goes down to the way that we design the operating model of how we make things and how we bring things to market. And so we're. We're very intentional about our organizational structure, our calendar and how we operate and the interaction of the teams to design those things, to make what we make.

[John Evans]

Yeah. Now, do you design everything in house? That was one of the things I was.

[Hiroki]

Yes, yes. Yeah. And I'm super passionate about this, is that I really, really, truly believe that having everything in house is the best way to do it. And so we have. All of our advertising is done in house. The marketing is, of course, done in house. All of the design work is done in house. The product design work is done in house. Product marketing is all in house as well. And I think the benefits of it is, you know, and we're also highly, highly collaborative. And so you have the advertising creative team sitting right next to the product design team sitting right next to engineering teams. And so ideas can flow horizontally really, really easily. I mean, and a great example of this is when we started with Airbnb Originals. In designing these things, what we wanted to do, the goal, the mission was to understand the most authentic way to communicate 135 different cities around the world. Right. Like, how do we bring forward the most authentic versions of those cities? And so we. We talked to writers and curators and artists in all those cities and came up with this concept of, let's narrow it down to three principles for every single city. And we took those three principles, and that informed the types of chefs that we got in the city, the types of writers that we got, the types of tours that you get, the types of galleries that we leaned into, the most interesting hosts in those cities. That brief also went and informed the way that we approached the advertising. And so you had the design team that was designing the experiences and going out and finding these things in these cities working really close with the advertising team. So the advertising teams could really understand why what was so special about this chef that was making ramen or this, you know, this person in Peru walking you through some historical monuments. And so, you know, that that connection is really, really critical to the way we do our work.

[John Evans]

I really like that because I think for so many marketers that they feel like they're stuck in this silo often at the end of the process, which is like, the product's been made, it's all been agreed, the price has been set, everything's fixed.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And you've got to go out and somehow sell it.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Or they go, I wish we could change this. You know, because often the marketers are the ones close to the customer, aren't they? Because they're spending their time understanding the customer and so on.

[Hiroki]

Right.

[John Evans]

So the fact that you can be so well connected gives you a massive influence, doesn't it?

[Hiroki]

It does, it does, yeah. And, you know, even, I mean, we call it concurrent design rather than serial where it is. Everything is kind of happening all at once, and it's more about, like, thinking about the entire chain all at once. And so when you're thinking about product, feature, the design of it, you really are also thinking about how you market it or even how you explain it on a keynote slide. Because, you know, usually if you can't explain a feature in a keynote slide, it's probably going to be far too complicated to use or to understand when it's in the app. So I think our creatives and our designers think concurrently, and so they think about the beginning and the end at the same time. The customer and our development process at the same time.

[John Evans]

Yeah. As you came through in the speech today, because the simplicity of the execution, the way it sync everything, synchronizes together was just, you know, felt very obvious. And.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, and I think the big benefit of it is it's just very easy to understand for someone, for a customer, you know, for someone that's on the receiving end of this, it's very easy to comprehend, it's very easy to understand, and it's very easy to use, you know, and I think. But it's not easy to make. It's like really, really difficult to get there because you're, you know, you're working through a lot of problems simultaneously. You're. You're questioning everything all the way up until the end. But the goal and the benefit is that, you know, this thing that comes out the other end is just very easy to understand.

[John Evans]

I think there's a truth in life, isn't there, that the simpler things appear, the harder work was required to get it to that point?

[Hiroki]

Exactly. Yeah, it's much easier to get.

[John Evans]

Complicated is easy.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah. It's like a classic design thing. It's much easier to add to the story and make it bigger and bigger and bigger and like, flourish it more and more colorful. It's extremely hard to try and narrow it down into one thing. You know, it's like designing a logo versus making a film. It's just very difficult to try and get the essence of something and to the, you know, the most minimal amount of moves as possible. That reduction is really painful.

[John Evans]

It isn't it?

[Hiroki]

It's really painful.

[John Evans]

Now, the big news, of course, is you've been, you know, you're very famous, well known for, you know, being a accommodation provider, shall we call it, but now you're stretching from accommodation into experiences and services. So tell me a bit about what was the idea behind expanding Airbnb into those two, two, two sectors?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, I don't know if it's as much about extending, Expanding from accommodations. It's more about this concept of us rep the flag and what we're about, you know, because I think to your point, the founding story wasn't an accommodation story. It was a magical trip, you know, so, you know, those three people came, they met strangers, they did stuff together. They were all very open minded and, you know, willing to connect. And they did. And they formed like lifelong relationships afterwards. And that was more than just about the place to stay. It was the activities that they did, you know, and so experiences and services and stays all together is really about replanting the flag. It's about regrasping that idea that Airbnb is about the trip.

[John Evans]

Now, what kind of services are we talking about here? I mean, can I go to the gym? Can I get a massage? What sort of things?

[Hiroki]

It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. We're starting with 10 categories with many more to come, but we've got like, chefs, we've got masseuses, we've got trainers, we've got people to do hair and makeup, you know, and so it's basically all of the types of services that people thought were only available in a hotel, you know, because Airbnb, when you think about traveling on Airbnb versus traveling in a hotel, traveling in Airbnb is so much better. I've got, you know, my wife and I have three boys and, you know, it's like, good luck trying to find a adjoining room in any hotel. And so what ends up happening is we end up being split up, you know, and with three boys, there's no way I'm going to put them in their own hotel room down the hall. Bananas. And so, you know, with Airbnb, it's great. We can all be together. We've got a living room, we've got a kitchen. We don't have to, like, eat on the bed, you know, we don't have to go to bed when the youngest goes to bed, so it's much, much easier. But hotels still do have this convenience of services. But, you know, now that we have services, then actually at a much better value, it kind of makes Airbnbs, you know, hands down, no brainer solution for travel.

[John Evans]

It really does. I mean, I have the same conversation as, well, my wife, which is, we know, we'll go and stay in Airbnb, but then she goes, but then I have to cook. You know, it's a first reaction. Well, if we can overcome that one.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah. And it's great, you know, because even if, like, you like to go out to eat a lot, there's that one night in the middle of the trip where you're like, let's just be at home, let's like, let the kids eat in pajamas, let's just chill out on the couch and let's just have some downtime, you know, and services are great, you know, and a lot of these services are under 50 bucks a person, and so they're a great value as well.

[John Evans]

And of course, holidays or vacation, all about making memories, aren't they? And have a photographer or have a, you know, someone come and do a fitness class for you, you know, the. The imagination. The other thing, I suppose that also helps. This is planning a holiday is quite a big ordeal, isn't it, because you're going somewhere often, you don't know.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

You're Googling all sorts of different local suppliers. You don't know if they're going to be any good or not.

[Hiroki]

Yes.

[John Evans]

So you're having to check them out on TripAdvisor.

[Hiroki]

Exactly.

[John Evans]

There's a whole lot of research that goes in.

[Hiroki]

And if you don't speak the language, good luck.

[John Evans]

Yeah, well, yeah, even more so.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

So the convenience element struck me as quite powerful.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, it's really convenient. One of the things that we designed into the app also is that there is this journey of travel planning, right? And you first dream about traveling, and then you actually have to plan it, and then you book it, and then you take a break from all of that, and then you travel, right. And there's a satisfaction curve that's like, this starts really high at dreaming you're in love, the world seems great. Traveling seems awesome. And then you're planning, and it gets, you know, it's a little bit of work. It's kind of hard. And then you're booking, and booking is terrible because you're, like, spending. Everyone hates booking the trip because it's terrible. You spend a lot of money, you make a commitment, so much so that you take a break, and then you're actually traveling again. Now, Airbnb used to occupy that center section, the most painful section. Right. And so the app was kind of designed to make it really simple, quick, and frictionless. Right. To get you out of the pain. Now, with services and experiences, like you said, a lot of people book those things on the trip a few days before or a few days during. And so we designed the app to actually change and offer you experiences and services when you're traveling, because we know when you're traveling, we know the date that you're checking in, and we know how long you're staying. And so we can notify you when you arrive in Tokyo and say, hey, welcome to Tokyo. You know, we've got three things happening tonight with availability. You know, come check it out.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Hiroki]

And it's really cool.

[John Evans]

The level of personalization struck me as well. The. You had a great example of a trip to Paris, and somebody was able to book a tour of the Notre Dame, but with somebody that actually had a hand in redesigning the roof after the fire.

[Hiroki]

Yes.

[John Evans]

That's a level of kind of tailor making that you just wouldn't get if you just, you know, looked at a city tour of. Of Notre Dame.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

On Google.

[Hiroki]

Yeah. And. And that's, you know, that's really kudos to the. The curation teams that went into Paris, and, you know, they researched the Eiffel Tower, they researched the. The places that people save up all year to go see, like Notre Dame in Paris. But, you know, rather than offering just a plain old commodity tour of those things, they wanted to offer something that's way deeper and unique and something that even a local would find interesting. And so, yeah, Axel, who's the host of the Notre Dame thing, was part of the restoration, gives an unbelievable tour and explanation of the renovation. It's Amazing.

[John Evans]

Of course, you know, we've been talking about the guest experience, but of course, the flip of that is the host experience, isn't it? Because suddenly now you're opening up a new economy of people that can. That can then sort of effectively monetize their own time.

[Hiroki]

Exactly.

[John Evans]

Their own expertise.

[Hiroki]

Yeah. And it's great because that money stays in the community. You know, it's like we were just speaking earlier, there's just been this rise in all inclusive resorts where you go and the idea is you basically keep the guests captive, you get their accommodation dollars, you get their food and drink dollars, and you get their entertainment dollars. But it makes so much more sense and it's so much more healthier for a community if you can go in and the money stays in the pockets of the homeowners and stays in the pockets of the service providers that live there and stays in the pockets of the experienced hosts that live there. You know, much better that the money stays in that community than going back overseas to, you know, a big chain or conglomerate.

[John Evans]

Yeah, yeah. No, that's very exciting. I mean, so hopefully you'll be able to boost the economy of quite a few destinations off the back of this.

[Hiroki]

Fingers crossed.

[John Evans]

Yeah. Which would be amazing. I mean, one thing that struck me was the sheer logistics of pulling this off. I mean, I don't know how much you can share about what went into it, but you're talking about 600 or more cities that are now doing services and experience around the world. What goes into kind of putting this organization together?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, that's where, you know, kind of the design of the process, I think, comes into play is where we really were intentional about sitting down and saying, okay, there's, you know, all of these cities in the world. What is Airbnb's point of view with these things? How do we design a process that brings out, you know, some principles that. That help us show Paris in the way that we think Paris should be seen and the way that, you know, locals that live there wanted to be seen. And so it's really kudos to the team to go into each of these cities, identify the principles and what makes these things unique, and then go in and, you know, search, like on foot, you know, people to people, and find these incredible hosts, you know, and track them down and design the experiences with them and then actually, you know, load them into the software, build the software to do it, and then. And bring it to life. It's a. It was a big operation. Yeah, we've been working on it for a Long time.

[John Evans]

It strikes me, actually, in the age of AI, that's the extremely human thing to do, isn't it? To sort of go and discover these local, undiscovered kind of experts that know the area in different fields.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Evans]

That's kind of what people desire, isn't it? It's that authentic experience completely.

[Hiroki]

And, you know, like a lot of these experience hosts that are our originals, they don't do this for a living. You know, they have other lives and they do things of note that are really fascinating. And so we worked with them to actually design the run of show of these experiences. And, you know, we know, like how long these things should be, how to greet people, how to get them to talk to each other and connect and how to, you know, how to do a fond farewell and how to get them to connect afterwards. And so we brought all of that expertise together with, you know, these incredibly talented locals to hand design all of these experiences.

[John Evans]

And some of them are quite wild. Right. So even I think I was saying you could even go and have ramen with Megan Thee stallion. Yeah, I was not expecting that.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah, there are some fun ones. Yeah. Or throw a spiral with Patrick Mahomes and. Yeah, yeah, there's some fun ones. It's great. You know, it's. It's a lot of the hosts that we work with, I think, find the idea of this a great platform to connect with their fans or audiences in real life, you know, and so we've had a lot of interest from a lot of our hosts that have huge social media followings, that want a different way to connect with their fans. Create content, but also connect with their fans. But again, it just goes back to this idea that we're connecting people in real life, celebrating what's unique about destinations and celebrating what's unique about the world. Yeah.

[John Evans]

Now, this is presumably meant quite a lot of re engineering of the app itself, doesn't it, because you're now offering three, I guess, services rather than one. What's been involved in rethinking and redesigning the app?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, it's been a huge amount of work. It's been really kind of years in the making. You know, last year we launched Icons, and that was really creating a lot of the technical foundation to do what we're doing today in Airbnb originals. And so, you know, it's one example of a million of the amount of engineering and rewriting deep, deep, deep at the platform level that's had to happen in the past couple of years. But, you know, all of this since the pandemic has been about building a platform capable of expanding like this. And so I think what you're seeing today with these two new lines of business is the beginning of a lot more cool things to come.

[John Evans]

That's very amazing. And is this in house as well? The app, all the app design and how the platform works?

[Hiroki]

Yes. Yeah. We have an unbelievable app design team that's together with an amazing product marketing team that work really closely together. Our product marketing team is interesting in a lot of places you would call this team product management, but our product folks have a really, and this goes back to this idea of concurrent that I talked about. They really understand what we call the outbound, which is the go to market side of the business. And so they understand the nuance of communication and marketing to an audience. They understand the nuance of positioning and of general marketing. And they, they bring that all back into the way that they conceive of the products and they're working hand in hand with the designers to make that happen. And what's also interesting is they're working hand in hand with the engineers. And you know, if you were to come in Airbnb, sit in a meeting, you probably wouldn't know the difference between a designer, an engineer and a product marketer because they can, you know, they all speak the same language called the three legged stool.

[John Evans]

And are they co located together as well? Do they work physically in the same place?

[Hiroki]

They do, yeah. Yeah. I mean we're, we're, we're mostly remote, but when we are here, we're all together and we're all talking together. But you know, it's the, this, the simultaneous way of working, this concurrent way of working. It's, it just requires an extreme amount of collaboration, you know, and it requires a, a very, very open minded approach to working and highly collaborative, you know. So, you know, there is attacks of a lot of meetings and a lot of communication, but I think that the benefits of it are worth it.

[John Evans]

And how do you lead the organization in that scenario? Because you need everyone to collaborate, work together, be low ego because you're trying to get things done across function. How do you sort of set up the conditions for that?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, the interesting thing is the one thing that they all have in common is, is time. Right. And so we manage against the time. It sounds really stupid and really simple, but you just manage against a timeline and a roadmap and it's really easy. You have deadlines, you have milestones. It sounds like a no brainer, but when you have everyone synced in time across the same deadlines, what happens is the functions that sit next to each other begin to understand what's involved in each other's functions. And so as they make decisions, they understand the knock on effects to the organizations that sit alongside them. We call it we're functional, so we're divided by functions. We have this phrase of the primary team and so there's the team that you manage. If you're the head of design, you have a whole design team that you manage and you write their performance reports and you put them on assignments, you manage them. But the real team that you're working with is your primary team, which are your peers. And so that's that horizontal team that you asked about. The engineer, the product marketer, the designer, the creative. That primary team of peers sit shoulder to shoulder, understand deeply their timelines, their constraints, what it takes to get stuff done, how their teams operate. And so they know, the creative person knows that when they see something happening over on the product side and maybe an issue or an opportunity happening with engineering, they know how that's going to affect the positioning of it, the end product. And they can move that much more quickly, you know, and that's how like today you saw that massive amount of work across so many different functions land on one day. The only way you get there is if that that primary team really deeply understands each other and what's involved.

[John Evans]

Yeah. I even like the way you call it the primary team. Isn't it because you realize that's what it takes to make the thing actually happen.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Rather than going vertically where it's like we're going to make our bit work.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And then, you know, don't care about your bit. But actually if you're all lined up like that, then you kind of win together, don't you?

[Hiroki]

Exactly. Yeah. We have this phrase called a no look pass, where it's what, it's like my favorite move in basketball. It's where, you know, you see a guy like not even look and he throws the ball and the other guy's like right there waiting. Right. Yeah. And so that's a lot. That's what we aspire to when we operate, is that, you know, we're so familiar with how this all happens against time, against the timeline, with the same milestones that you see something happening and, and the other team member could kind of be there and catch the ball. And so we very rarely have those instances where it's like a baseball that's dropped between center and Left and everyone's kind of standing there looking, watching it drop. Everyone knows what role they play and everyone knows how to move and adjust based on what's happening.

[John Evans]

Yeah. And the danger of the vertical approach is that everyone then blames everyone else, don't they, if something goes wrong, it's like, wow, they didn't do it. That lot over there didn't do it. Whereas actually that being aligned that way.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, the primary team. Yeah, yeah. And they, you know, they have a great relationship and you know, it's, it's, they, they work together constantly, they debate constantly, we argue constantly, we have a lot of conflict, but there's great collaboration and so, but it takes a certain kind of person to work that way. Yeah, it takes a very, very, like open minded, very, very collaborative, very, very low ego type of person.

[John Evans]

Now you've built something quite exciting, extending its services and experiences. How are you going to communicate that out? What's the plan to launch from here?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, well, glad you asked. So we've got, we have an amazing brand spot called the Grand Adventure. And what it does is it really talks about how travel used to be this kind of amazing, fanciful adventure where there was a lot of serendipity and magic. And it's now kind of transformed into this checklist, you know, of Instagram selfies to take and pois to go to. But there's still a lot of magic out there, you know, there really is. And if you can just dig a little bit deeper, our experiences can bring that forward, you know, and bring the magic back to travel. So we got a great brand spot that we're excited about. We also, you know, what's interesting about experiences is that like I said, it's innately social because a lot of our hosts, the product itself has a huge organic ecosystem around it. And so we're doing a lot to get that ecosystem flourishing. We're also, you know, we're also finding that one of the predominant ways now that younger people are searching for travel is through social, like everything, you know, social search is really taking over. And so one of the most popular prompts is things to do in blank. So we have a whole campaign based around again, the principles of what we think makes a city authentic across hundreds and hundreds of cities where we're surfacing for people, experiences that are happening to the place that they're researching or to the place that they bought tickets for or the place that they're going. And you know, we can even get down to surfacing cool experiences with availability based around what you're interested in. So yeah, look out for that stuff coming.

[John Evans]

Very exciting. And you're collaborating with a lot of celebrities, influencers, people in, you know, in and around the industry as well. Yes, yes, get that story out there.

[Hiroki]

Exactly. We have a tremendous amount of influencers that we're working with that are also, some of them are actually hosts themselves that we're also sending on experiences. And so, yeah, we are, we're, we're trying to get this as far, as far and wide as possible.

[John Evans]

Amazing. So if you wanted to be a host, how would you go about doing it? How easy is the host experience to get onto the platform?

[Hiroki]

It's super easy. We've again, that's another part of the app that we completely retooled is the host side of the app. Most people don't ever see it, but it's actually the tools that a potential host would use to get themselves onto the platform. And it is as brain dead easy and beautiful as the guest side of the app. And so it's very, very simple to load in what your experience would be, what your run of show is, photographs, history about you, some credentials and then to submit. It's really, really simple.

[John Evans]

That's so good. Is it? Because often in these things the front end is all very shiny and then the back end, so to speak, is usually really awkward and antiquated. So it's probably that the two bits are as seamless as each other.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah. And we have amazing calendaring tools and we have amazing pricing tools and it's the kind of stuff that actually our UI and UX designers kind of geek out about because it's, it's very task driven, so they're just beautifully designed and everything is a reflection of the amount of care that we put into this. And so the teams, even on those host tools, spend a lot of time and energy and thinking into making them great.

[John Evans]

It's funny actually, I mean, watching Brian present it, he was most excited when he was flicking between the experiences and services and how the icons changed or the, was the identification. You know, that was interesting actually. Like the, the identification verification of you as a host looked like a kind of real world identity card, you know, down to its 3D graphics and hologram and everything. Yeah, there's a lot of love and, you know, attention put into.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Even the aesthetic, that level of detail.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, it's a testament to Brian as, you know, being a designer and a CEO, that he really appreciates that and he understands that that level of, like, magic and discovery adds a lot to the experience. And maybe not each thing individually, but if you go through the entire process and you feel that it makes a difference.

[John Evans]

It does, it does. Well, maybe to round off then, because, you know, you're right, you're running leading marketing for a hugely successful organization, doing very exciting things. Anyone listening that kind of aspires to, you know, do the kind of role you do in the future. What sort of lessons would you offer? What advice would you give?

[Hiroki]

I think, you know, I mean, I was lucky enough to have a start in on the creative side. You know, I started my career as a designer. And so I think it always helps when you're thinking about marketing and everything from, you know, product and the positioning to the marketing itself and the creative, the advertising, to really try and put yourself in the head of the customer who's at the other end of all this stuff. You are not the most important person in that person's life. You are. That person is busy. That person has family and love and time and pressure totally outside of your world. And so you're very lucky to get their time. And so you just have to remember that, you know, they don't see things sequentially, they don't imagine what you want them to imagine, and they're probably half paying attention. And so it's really, really critical to remember that and just make everything really, really simple and really respect the customer's time, respect their life, respect that they're busy and, you know, be grateful that they're paying attention to you and, you know, take them on a journey, but just keep it really simple and easy for them. And I think that, you know, the ones that do really well, that I've. That have, you know, work with us or that I see out there, is that they, they just, they have the ability to just keep it really, really simple, you know. And, you know, I keep saying that like it's easy to do, but it's the most difficult thing ever to do. It's the hardest thing in the world to do because it's, it's your baby, you know, you think it's important. You've lived with it for a year and a half and you want to tell the entire story. But, you know, for someone on the other end of it, they've got half a second and you just need to tell them the one thing that is important to them, that relates to them.

[John Evans]

I love that advice so much because as marketers, we just want to tell everyone everything and have 15 lists of reasons to believe in whatever it is we're selling sort of thing, but really focusing on the thing that matters. Years ago, actually, I ran a van sales team, interestingly enough, and I got everyone to spend half a day from the head office to go out on the vans, meeting our customers, delis and cafes and places like that. And they'd always moan, they'd always go, oh, we haven't got time for this. They'd come back buzzing, going, oh, I didn't realize our trays didn't fit in the shelf, or no one likes this particular flavor, or the point of sale didn't fit. And it sounds small, but we'd come back with like 20 or 30 improvements that we'd never ever have got to if we had spent time with the customer.

[Hiroki]

And I think it's when you do that and you pay attention to that and the customer feels like, oh, there's that lack of friction here, or that little thing was nice. Oh, I think they develop a sense of respect that you're thinking about them. And I think there's a connection there that happens. And either they like you, they listen a little harder, they believe in you, they trust you, but all those little things really make a difference.

[John Evans]

And I also found it made me much more credible in the organization because when we're in the management meetings, rather than debating theoretically what we should do, I said, well, yesterday I was on the vans, I was with our customers, and they clearly told me this. Yeah, it's almost impossible to argue against that.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Evans]

As well as gives you that legitimacy, doesn't it?

[Hiroki]

Yeah, yeah, it's super important. It's super important. Yeah. You gotta just remember that, like, people are busy, you know, people are busy and you're lucky to get a piece of their attention. And so you just have to be really respectful and clear.

[John Evans]

What would be your number one tip for marketers?

[Hiroki]

You know, in this day and age with just the dramatic changes that are happening in media constantly and just how fragmented the landscape is, I think a lot of people have just forgotten. I think we've gotten a little bit over obsessed with the technical side of marketing and people have forgotten the more human, empathetic side of it and really appealing to emotions and understanding the customer and the creativity of it and the importance of that. I guess that. That would be my. That would be my biggest piece.

[John Evans]

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Hiroki, thank you so much. It's been wonderful to talk to you. Congratulations on.

[Hiroki]

Thank you.

[John Evans]

On the summer launch. It's very exciting.

[Hiroki]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Looking forward to booking myself in for a few experiences.

[Hiroki]

Book some services too.

[John Evans]

Yeah, and some services. It's gonna be good. As it happens, actually, me and the family are coming to LA over the summer, so this is really good timing. So.

[Hiroki]

Yeah, maybe you should sign up.

[John Evans]

I've written a very long list of things we're gonna be doing.

[Hiroki]

Yeah. Megan thee stallion is Megan the stallion.

[John Evans]

Yeah. I need to get top of that. Get in quick before she sells out.

[Hiroki]

Yeah. Well, thanks very much for having me. I appreciate it.

[John Evans]

Absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on X NCensorCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.