THOMAS RYAN N0499487
FASH20031/ COMMUNICATION AND MESSGAE BIG IDEA AND CREATIVE CONCEPT AIRBNB
Fig 2.
CONTENTS
Fig 1. front cover
Introduction
3
Belong
6
Belo
7
Consumer Profile
10
The Problem
11
Big Idea
13
Benefits
15
Consumer Profile
18
Digital Campaign
19
Storyboard
21-22
Inspiration
23
Social Platforms
26
Conclusion
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INTRODUCTION
Airbnb aren’t basically just another travel agent. This brand is so much more and has more of a soul than anything else remotely like it out there. Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace, for people to travel the world, discover unique places, but do so whilst staying in some of the most luxurious and extraordinary accommodation and extremely low prices. What makes Airbnb so different is the fact that they are providing a service where you choose to stay in virtually someone else’s home, but they want you to feel as if it is your home and be able to feel welcome and relaxed. They want you to establish relationships with the “host” of whose home you are staying in, they simply want you to “belong” wherever you travel around the world and do so with a community of people around you that simply just want the same thing and make it so that you don’t need to fret about anything. All you need to worry about in their mind is where should you travel to next? Having been founded in August 2008 in San Francisco, they have now had over 25,000,000+ guests, who have been based
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in around 34,000 cities within 190 countries and have even had the choice of staying in one of their 600 castles that are available to them. Fig 2. The service itself is incredibly simple, and is pretty much just like any other travel site in a sense, but what makes them unique is that you have a chance to speak to the people who own the properties before you have even visited yet alone made a booking, making it so that you truly know whose bed you are going to be sleeping in, simply so that you don’t feel like a stranger in someone else’s home in a strange city with a different language than your own. All you have to do is go onto their site and just type in where you want to go, how much you are willing to spend and then what type of accommodation you want, whether it is a flat all by yourself in the centre of Rome, or an 11 bedroom house in Bora Bora with your own little bit of the ocean just outside your door, the range of facilities that they supply is simply incredible, they want you to see the world and feel inspired by all
Fig 3.
“feel welcomed, respected and appreciated for who you are, no matter where you might be�
Fig 4.
BELONG
Airbnb guests are invited to stay with multiple people around the world, but something that they gain from their experiences is something much more personal than an airbed at a messy apartment. They see the city through their host’s eyes, they learn their host’s favourite place to grab a coffee, where the best tacos are, and have friends to hang out with whenever they wanted. The point in it all is that even though they may be thousands of miles away from where they lived, is that they still feel as if they are at home. The original purpose of Airbnb was to help people out with their rent by renting out any spare space they had, has now transformed into something much more meaningful, its become about renting a home, not a house. A house is just simply a space, but a home is where you belong. With Airbnb you can simply belong anyway you want within the world. The sense of belonging is taken for granted in today’s society. Through modern day mass-produced and impersonal
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travel experiences, people have stopped trusting those who they don’t know directly, and that all you need to do is that “you just need to get to know them”. This whole concept is one of the reasons as to why Airbnb want to focus around this sense of belonging. Airbnb doesn’t want their rewards to just be financial, they want them to be personal; they want everyone to gain something from having a typical Airbnb experience. At a time when modern technology enables people to keep each other at a distance but still in contact, Airbnb wants to use technology to bring people together, to use the fact that at a click of a button you can create a relationship with people around the world, and become part of a community and “feel welcomed, respected and appreciated for who you are, no matter where you might be”. Belonging is a word that simply defines Airbnb and they use this sense of an emotional connection throughout all of their promotion to entice their target market into a community that everybody craves.
Bélo
With the use of The Bélo Airbnb have created a symbol for the entire Airbnb community so that they all feel connected to one another and their shared values. “It’s a symbol for people who want to welcome into their home new experiences, new cultures, and new conversations”, a universal symbol for that means belonging. The Bélo itself represents people, places, love and Airbnb, everything that this community is made up of. The symbol is something that anyone within the community can adapt to make it represent every individual so that it is unique as its consumers, this is a concept that is being done to recognize how Airbnb isn’t just their identity but that it is part of every individual and that their identity is a shared brand.
“It’s a symbol for people who want to welcome into their home new experiences, new cultures, and new conversations” 7
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Fig 5.
Fig 6.
CONSUMER PROFILE: GUEST
CONSUMER PROFILE: HOST
A typical Airbnb host is someone who is incredibly house-proud and basically wants to show off what they have created which is improved by how artistic they are. A host isn’t someone who is anti-social, but someone who is part of a good group of friends who are willing to open up there interesting and cultured lives with others around the world, because they truly believe that what they have is worth sharing. Airbnb allows the hosts to not only profit financially to afford the luxuriously appealing homes but also create a larger network of friends that allows them to feel as though they have done something good for another person, not just through providing a place to stay, but for providing a welcoming environment that makes guests feel safe and as though they truly are at home and among friends.
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An Airbnb guest on the other hand is much more of the adventurous type and strives to meet new people in new places and learn from others experiences and adapt to their surroundings. An Airbnb guest is someone who is a risk taker, and stays with almost a complete stranger, because they want to belong within a set community and feel welcomed and take the risk of throwing themselves into the unknown. As a guest, Airbnb allows them to have opportunity’s around the world that otherwise they either wouldn’t have had access to or it would have been much more difficult and through using this service it creates the opportunity to have a truly authentic experience through meeting those who know where to go rather than simply sticking to a guide book and showing guests what they want rather than what a mass audience would look for. As a guest they want to be sociable in a new environment and refuse to isolate themselves and through this they feel successful and happy with the fact that they are gaining exactly want they want from their travels with a specifically personalized experience.
THE PROBLEM
One thing that is evident about Airbnb as a brand is that they seem to focus on individuals and their experience; predominately aiming and young adventurous individuals. One thing that they miss on a large scale is promoting their ideas towards groups, but much more specifically families. They are the ones who make up a massive percentage of those who travel in groups each year, making it an annual thing repeatedly. Airbnb targets individuals and their experiences and building a community person by person. But what if they aimed towards matching up families around the world to have group holidays to appropriate locations where not only could parents gain something from but also their children, and drawing in consumers from a younger age, making them familiar with the company and their values and making those children value such experience earlier on. The reason behind targeting families is that within creating my survey one thing that stuck out when participants where asked what does the word ‘belong’ mean to them, is that they mentioned friendships and family. So why not join the two ideas together? Create
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friendships as a family and create your own community. The idea is to create an emotional connection between children and parents alike and create long lasting friendships so that they meet up time and time again. With today’s technology it is much more easier for children to stay in touch with their friends and with the younger generation being much more technologically savvy it makes sense to open up this idea of making new friends around the world rather than just what they have around them and parents should enable this fact and trust who their children are speaking to through knowing their parents. If you create a friendship from a younger age you are more likely to be in contact later on in life, so why not create friendships that last a lifetime from the beginning?
“BELONG”
Fig 7.
THE BIG IDEA 13
The initial idea is to use the way in which Airbnb enables their users to search for locations and view places they can stay but also add in other filters such as are you part of a family, how many are in your family and what are the age ranges. Airbnb will then match participants up with other families in their chosen destination and if they cannot find a match alternative locations will also appear with ideal matches. An advisement campaign featuring families rather than individuals would also be created to show that you can belong anywhere together. This is being done so that viewers who are part of a family and relate to the campaign on an emotional level and relate to other families. Emotional response to an advert has a far greater influence on a consumer’s reported intent to buy or participate by a ratio of 3:1 for a video campaign and 2:1 for a print advertisement.
Fig 8.
BENEFITS 15
The benefits of using this idea would be that its about creating friendships as a whole family rather than separately and establishing a community between the two families. It’s about understanding the situations that each family are in and helping each other out when its time to relax, doing everything together and having everyone occupied with their friends. Its about opening up the world to your children from a young age and forcing them to be sociable so that they can strive for friendships when they are older because they know how it feels to belong and making friendships that can last a lifetime.
Fig 9.
Fig 10.
on Facebook or spending hour and hours talking to them on the phone about anything and everything. Her appearance is everything, constantly experimenting with trying out different types of makeup and always wanting the clothes that her idols wear. This family wishes they were more cultured, wish they had the time to go to different places and try new things but only simply have a few short weeks off a year.
CONSUMER PROFILE: HOST
CONSUMER PROFILE: GUEST
A typical guest family begins with the hard working father, a man who does nothing but earn money for his family to have the best things in life and have opportunity’s that he never had when he was younger, he is a loving man who loves nothing more than to sit down in his spare time and watch documentaries dreaming of when he was younger and used to love to travel and do the most adventurous things around him. His wife is a woman who is incredibly house-proud and appearances are everything. In her spare time she is either cleaning up after her children, cooking a home made meal every night or looking for the small spaces of time when she can par take in her crafty hobbies from card making to knitting, keeping people such as Kirsty Allsop a close inspiration to her life. Her children on the other hand, start with her son aged 10, a boy who loves the outdoors and anything remotely sporty, and just being outside in general, he isn’t a fan of school and the only aspect of it that he actually likes is the fact that he gets to see his friends each day. His sister who is aged 13 is a complete and utter girly girl. Someone who enjoys listening to her favourite boy bands and sometimes obsessing over them, chatting to her friends
The hosts are exactly the same consisting of a father who works too much but just wants what is best for his family, a mother who loves her children and her home and wants to keep everything perfect and two children one who loves the outdoors and another who is all about his friends, all about seeing his mates and talking about the latest gadgets and begging his mother for a new phone or the latest games, because he wants better than want his friends have. One thing different is that this family loves meeting new people, loves going to museums trying new foods and doing everything together.
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DIGITAL CAMPAIGN 19
The digital campaign is simple, with a simple idea that one family wishes they had the time to try new things and feels as though they may be missing out but prefer to use the only spare time they have off together to either relax at home or go on holiday and rarely venture out of the resort. Another family will then feature within the campaign who have pretty much the same lives but every spare moment they have, they do things together keeping their lives exciting and constantly learning and trying new things together and then welcoming another family to join in and share their experiences whilst making new friends together.
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Fig 11.
Ordinary Family
Ordinary Home
CAMPAIGN
Family Adventure
New types of food
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Airbnb Family
Airbnb Home
STORYBOARD Belong as a family
New Locations
Happy to Belong together.
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Fig 12.
INSPIRATION 23
My main inspiration comes from Airbnb’s own ‘wall and chain’ advertisement by inspiring me to use the concept of having two different sides of a story and that there is a barrier between the two, in this case being the lack of adventure in one family and how they want to change that. I then want to go onto using the concept of how strangers can become friends but adapting this also for the children. I want to show how their lives can improve and how with Airbnb you can belong anywhere, together.
Fig 13.
Fig 14.
SOCIAL PLATFORMS 26
I want to use social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram as well as the Airbnb website. I want to have my entire campaign through both of them so that it reaches the younger demographic and put the idea in their mind as well as their parents and reinforce the concept that this is about both of the group; the family as a whole.
CONCLUSION 27
To conclude I want to convey the idea that families can belong anywhere together, through making new friends and sharing experiences and opportunities that benefit them all. Its about socialising and taking a break from day to day lives to be adventurous and try new things. Making it so that the Airbnb community is something that can grow with a person from starting with the brand with your parents to then moving onto the typical Airbnb experience of travelling. Using this initial idea as a starting point for the younger generation, but still benefiting parents who still strive for a little bit of adventure from time to time.
Fig 15.
METHODOLOGY
To solve my problem with my creative concep i had to do research through the mater of opinion, with fitting statistics. I came to the conclusion of family by asking 18-25 year olds about what the word belonging means to them, and the use of family was a reccurring theme. I used active platforms such as Facebok and Twitter, whilst hosting my survey on a reliable site. Additionally i had to engage on a personal level with my candidates with practical ways of interacting and gathering my findings When i contacted my candidates, i intended to access them across multiple platforms, using typeform for my survey. When i was going to contact Airbnb users i intended to go through Airbnb itself as a resultof the mass amount of users i would hae been able to find as well as an ideal candidate. measurments for my survey were gathered through percentage and averages.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY REFERENCES
Bergstr M. (2008) Essentials of visual Communication. laurence King Publishing Dilion, Susan. (2007) The fudementals of fashion managment. AVA Publishing MINTEL. Kelly J (2013) The impact of social media on tourism. [online] Available: www.academic.mintel.com/ display/643811/ [Accessed 09/01/15] Brian chesky. (2014). Belong Anywhere. Available: http://blog.airbnb.com/belong-anywhere/. [accessed 13th january 2015] Unknown. (2010). Advertsing. Available: http://www. themarketingguywhodrivessales.com/crashcourse/advtg. htm. [accessed 13th january 2015] Airbnb. (2014). Wall and chain. Available: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpAdyFdE3-c. [accessed 13/01/15]
Botsman R. and Rogers, R. (2010) Whats mine is yours: the rise of collaborative consumption. Harper Collins publishing. Pg.9 Carter, M (No Date) D& AD Creativity works. How advertising and design can power up business. London. Pg. 22 Sulivan, L (1998) ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!’: A guide to creating great Ads. New york: John Wiley & Sons. pG. 79 Brian chesky. (2014). Belong Anywhere. Available: http://blog.airbnb.com/belong-anywhere/. [accessed 13th january 2015]
Word Count: 2,598
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Figure 1, own edit (2015) Airbnb logo Figure 2, uploaded by unknown user (2015) Canyon Lake, Thailand [Online] http://indulgy.com/post/tQ4J9gjJd2/canyon-lake-thailand [Accessed: 13/01/15] Figure 3, Katie and Peter (2015) Secluded treehouse in Atlanta [Onine] https:// www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/1415908 [Accessed 13/01/15] Figure 4, uploaded by unknown user (2015) Island house, Finland [Online] http://besttravelphotos.me/2014/03/27/island-house-finland-2/ [Accessed 13/01/15]
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 5, Airbnb (2014) Bilboard [Online] http://www.wearedesignstudio.com/ works/airbnb-brand/ [Accessed 13/01/15] Figure 6, Uploaded by unknown user (2014) Rustic bedroom [Online] http:// uk.pinterest.com/tracysvendsen/rustic-bedrooms/ [Accessed 13/01/15] Figure 7, Susan Hope (2014) family [Online] http://www.susannahhope.com [Accessed 14/01/15] Figure 8, Own edit (2015) Print screen of airbnb and then edited [Online] www. airbnb.com [Accessed 14/01/15] Figure 9, sycamorelanephotography (2013) Family [Online] http://www. sycamorelanephotography.com [Accessed 14/01/15] Figure 10, uploaded by unknown user (2015) Young Family [Online] https:// www.tumblr.com/tagged/young-family [Accessed 13/01/15] Figure 11, Own edit (2015) Belong as a family [Online] http:// braedonphotography.com/portfolio/page/About [Accessed 14/01/15] Figure 12, Own edit (2015) Storyboard [Accessed 14/01/15] Figure 13, Airbnb (2014) Wall and Chain [Online] https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BpAdyFdE3-c [Accessed 18/12/14] Figure 14, Own Edit (2015) Facebook print screen [Online] www.facebook.com/ airbnb [Accessed 13/01/15] Figure 15, Uploaded by unknown user [2014] Machu Picchu [Online] http:// www.peru-machu-picchu.com [Accessed 13/01/15]
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APPENDIX