Airbnb Founder Brian Chesky recently posted an article on Medium about the most important piece of advice he has ever gotten when building Airbnb: Don’t fuck up the culture!
The advice Chesky got came courtesy of Airbnb investor Peter Thiel, after the company pocketed some $150 million from his Founders Fund. Why is this important advice for any growing business?
Chesky puts it this way: “Our culture is the foundation for our company… The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.“
A clear and well communicated company culture speaks to how empowered the employees feel to innovate as well as how likable the brand is in the eyes of the consumers. This is where storytelling comes into the picture, because behind the logos are real people with real stories to tell. People that we can then chose to like or dislike. If the culture is strong enough, users will become fans and tell their own brand stories and do your marketing for you.
Airbnb have so far put community and usability front and center in their content marketing and hopefully they’ll use real hosts and guests in their future ads as well.
Sure, there has been a backlash to Airbnb’s business model, but it has enough fans to back them up for the long run and that’s why Peter Thiel invested in them.
A different school of thinking is represented by Cadillac in their recent ELR electric car campaign that ran during expensive Olympics spots as well as during the Oscars.
“Why do we work so hard? For what? For this? For stuff?” asks actor Neal McDonough as he gazes out over his pool and then goes on to give his take on capitalism and the American Dream: “Other countries, they work, they stroll home, they stop by the cafe. They take August off. Off. We’re crazy, driven hard-working believers. Those other countries think we’re nuts. Whatever.”
If you’re in marketing, you’ve probably seen the commercial already, if not, here it is:
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