Tag: marketing

• Airbnb still has a lot of accommodations

  There are a lot of headwinds facing Airbnb. Cities around the world seem to be systematically making it more difficult to be a host. New York City, as many of you know, recently made it so that you need to be physically present while the dwelling is being rented. That is pretty limiting. Similar things are happening in non-urban markets too. North of Toronto in Muskoka, there’s a draft by-law that will, among other things, limit short-term rentals to 50% of the total number of days within certain time periods. That eliminates the possibility of doing this as a business. So in many ways, it’s easy to be pessimistic about the future of Airbnb.

  But at the same time, if you step back and look at the bigger picture, there are over 7 million active listings on Airbnb. This effectively makes it the largest hospitality brand in the world. There are more accommodations on Airbnb than with Marriott, Hilton, Intercontinental, Wyndham, and Hyatt combined. (The below chart is from Scott Galloway.) It’s also important to point out that while Airbnb doesn’t own any of its own supply, the same is true of most hotel brands. They are, brands. The difference is that Airbnb created a more scalable platform and a more decentralized approach to aggregating supply.

  

  The numbers also don’t suggest that things are slowing down for Airbnb. (Here’s their Q3 2023 shareholder letter.) Active listings on the platform grew 19% YoY in Q3 2023 (or by almost 1 million listings). Revenue is up. Free cash flow is up. And in Q3 of last year, the company repurchased $500 million of stock, bringing their one year total to somewhere around $3 billion. So despite all of the efforts to curb short-term rentals within our cities, the company, at least for now, seems to be holding up just fine. And if they can successfully diversify beyond their core business, there could even be reason to be bullish on the world’s largest hospitality brand.

  Full disclosure: I am long $ABNB.

  2024.01.18

• A lot more people are now getting the news from TikTok

  It won’t surprise many of you that, according to this recent data from Pew, about half of Americans now get their news at least “sometimes” from social media. Meaning, half consume the news either “sometimes” or “often” through social media, and the other half do it “rarely” or “never”.

  What may be more interesting, though, is how much TikTok has jumped over the last three years. 43% of its users now “regularly” use it to get the news. This is roughly inline with Facebook and second only to X:

  

  Also interesting:

  

  Different networks seem to have clear gender biases. Facebook is women. Instagram is women. X is men. TikTok is women. Reddit is men. And Nextdoor is men. There also seems to be a racial bias that I wouldn’t have necessarily expected.

  If you market on social media, you may want to give some thought to these charts. For the full Pew fact sheet, click here.

  2023.11.21

• The creative agency behind One Delisle

  We have been working with Vanderbrand for many years. They are the creative agency behind both Junction House and One Delisle. We love the work that they do. It’s beautiful, and they have always managed to get our vision behind each project.

  In the case of Junction House, we wanted something clean and simple that at the same time responded to the creative edginess of the Junction neighborhood.

  And in the case of One Delisle, we wanted something elevated but that wasn’t traditional or typical. One Delisle is all about pioneering architecture and the brand needed to reflect that (we ended up creating our own typeface that will be carried through into the completed building).

  If you’re interested in learning more, Vanderbrand has just updated their website to include a full “case study” on One Delisle. You can check that out over here. Below are a few of my favorite images.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  2021.09.07

• Thoughts on branding and debranding

  This is an interesting article by Ben Schott of Bloomberg talking about how “debranding is the new branding.” In it he argues that for reasons of fashion, tech, and other factors, many or perhaps most brands seem to be shedding detail and depth in their brands/logos and moving toward simplicity and flatness. He calls this debranding (which doesn’t quite feel like the right word to me.)

  Countless examples are provided ranging from Burger King and KFC to Saint Laurent Paris and Diane Von Furstenberg. In all cases, their logos and lockups went from elaborate to minimal. And in some cases, names were deliberately shortened. Kentucky Friend Chicken, as you all know, became KFC, largely because “fried” was becoming an undesirable reference.

  The same is also true for newer brands that have no history of elaborate logos. As I was reading through the article, I started thinking about some of the project brands that we have created over the years. Here is our logo for Junction House (crafted by Vanderbrand):

  

  

  

  Some of this is certainly about fashion. At this point, overly detailed logos feel a bit cartoonish and antiquated. Clean and minimal is pretty much what you want today. Slate’s logo went through a similar transformation over the years and is now, as many of you know, a black box with white text.

  Another part of this is that logos and brands now need to live in so many different locations from favicons and mobile apps to business cards and social media profile photos. Sometimes you just don’t have enough real estate to show a lot of detail.

  Simplicity can also signal strength. Starbucks is perhaps a good example of this. Initially their logo spelled out Starbucks Coffee. But now we all associate their green nautical-inspired sea lady with Starbucks Coffee and so those words are no longer necessary. This kind of brand equity, of course, takes time to build.

  Fashion label Off-White is another interesting case study that I wrote about a few years ago, over here. What they have managed to do is take simple and mundane things like quotation marks and really own them as part of their brand. Put any word in quotation marks on a t-shirt and you’ll have me thinking it’s a $315 Off-White tee.

  That’s pretty powerful when you think of it.

  2021.03.09

• A mismatch of expectations

  Seth Godin’s blog post this morning, called “I hate this restaurant,” is really excellent. I would encourage you all to read it. In it, he talks about a mismatch of expectations. More specifically, he gives the example of somebody going to a restaurant and not liking what’s on offer, and therefore being upset. It’s not that the food was bad or that the restaurant has failed, it’s just that the person didn’t get what they were expecting. There’s a mismatch. And this, of course, happens all over the place and not just in restaurants. In his view, this failure is caused by a few different factors that ultimately result in us — the people that are involved in everything from the arts to business — having to make a decision about the kind of operation we would like to run. Below is an excerpt of those things. For the full post, click here.

  This failure comes from a few contributing factors, all amplified by our culture:

  First, you can’t know if you’re going to like an experience until you experience it. All you know is your understanding of what was on offer. And because there are so many choices and there’s so much noise, we rarely take the time to actually read the label, or we get carried away by the coming attractions, or we just don’t care enough to pay attention until we’re already involved.

  [And marketers are complicit, because in the face of too much noise, they hype what’s on offer and overpromise…]

  Second, because many people are afraid. They’re afraid of the new and even more than that, afraid of change. Most people in our culture would like to be entertained not transformed, lectured at instead of learning.

  Third, the double-edged sword of giving everyone a microphone means that we’ve amplified the voices of dissent at the same time we’ve given people a chance to speak up about their desires. This means that mass culture is far more divisive than it ever was before, and it also means that bubbles of interest are more likely to be served.

  And so the fork in the road:

  You can either turn your operation into a cross between McDonald’s and Disney, selling the regular kind, pandering to the middle, putting everything in exactly the category they hoped for and challenging no expectations…

  Or you can do the incredibly hard work of transgressing genres, challenging expectations and seeking out the few people who want to experience something that matters, instead of something that’s merely safe.

  2020.10.20

• Working from home: then and now

  In 1987, Apple thought working from home should look something like this:

   WFH, 1987 pic.twitter.com/R6s2j8uyau

  — Willem (@vanlancker) July 17, 2020

  Cool studio apartment with killer view. Hard disk that stores over 10,000 pages. Curious photoshoot-type lamp facing your bed. And fascimile machine capable of sending hard copies to anyone in the world. All while being steps from your refrigerator.

  But over three decades later, it instead turned out to be more like this:

  https://youtu.be/6_pru8U2RmM

  Isn’t technology liberating?

  2020.07.20

• People like us

  Seth Godin wrote on his blog today about what it means to be a lifelong fan — whether it be of a sports team, a car company, a political party, or, in his words, “anything where affiliation drives our sense of self and community.”

  There’s a powerful sentence in the middle of his post and it’s this one here:

  “People like us do things like this.“

  We often make decisions about products, brands, and even where to live based on a narrative that we craft for ourselves. We tell ourselves that I am the kind of person who lives in this neighborhood and drives this car. People like us do things like this.

  There’s an innate, emotional, and sometimes nonsensical desire to be part of what Seth calls our chosen “tribe.” And tribe does really feel like the right word. We all want to be a part of something. It helps to create meaning.

  So what’s your internal narrative? It probably determines how you hire for many of the “jobs” you need filled.

  2020.04.06

• A story about architecture, interiors, and branding

  I was recently having a debate with one of our architecture partners about the interrelationship between architecture, interiors, and branding. This came up because, in New York City, you almost need a name brand architect attached to your project in order to sell luxury condos.

  But this raises an interesting set of questions: How much value is driven by the quality of the architecture versus the architect’s brand? (Though, presumably you need the former in order to build the latter.) And how much of the value is actually just driven by the finishes (interiors) and the branding that you layer on after?

  This latter scenario is a depressing thought for architects. It is architecture as a kind of “empty vessel.” One that just gets dressed up for today’s Instagrammable moments. And I am sure that you can think of some examples of this. Not everything can be capital A architecture.

  But what is clear is that the most successful design-driven projects don’t think in this way. They are thoughtful and deliberate about each component, and they all work together to strengthen each other. Marketing, after all, is about telling the right story. It is always helpful when you actually have one to tell.

  2019.12.18

• Marketing to Hong Kong

  A reader of this blog, who is based in Hong Kong, recently emailed me these photos:

  

  

  They are of a direct mailer that he received in his mailbox for a project here in Toronto.

  He sent them to me because he thought it was an interesting example of how projects are marketed to residents of Hong Kong.

  I don’t know what most of the text means, but it is clear that Canada is a brand and that the Toronto Reference Library is an important landmark.

  2019.03.19

• The [Next] Pepsi Generation

  

  The product matters. How big is the screen on this smartphone? How many horses does this all-wheel drive car have? And how high are the ceilings in this condo? (Some architects get grumpy with me when I call buildings a “product.” It’s so much more than that, right?)

  But here is a good reminder from Zander Nethercutt via a post he did on Medium earlier this year: People Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves.

  The example he gives is that of Pepsi. While damn near identical to Coke in terms of its chemical composition, Pepsi was struggling until it decided to try something new. They stopped focusing on the product itself and instead starting selling the type of person you would become, if you drank Pepsi.

  These people, and this campaign, became known as the Pepsi Generation.

  We have talked about this idea before on the blog and this approach to selling is now quite commonplace. But I like how Nethercutt distills it down: Desire translates into consumption. And I want to buy a better version of myself.

  I also buy his add-on argument that social media has amplified our awareness and desires around self, because today we are so often externalizing it to the world and being instantaneously judged on it. Like. No like.

  Am I the kind of person who eats here, stays there, and consumes this?

  Photo by Christina Boemio on Unsplash

  2018.11.18