Those were early days of 2014, I had made up my mind to quit my job and travel the world. But the question was, how to fund the trip?
There were many options on the table, including crowdfunding. But there was one option that could have helped me make a monthly income. My mother and I had stumbled upon the idea while traveling through Europe in the summer of 2013. The idea was ‘Airbnb’.
Apart from the cost benefit; Airbnb also introduced us to interesting hosts. What more could one ask for from a travel accommodation website? Mom suggested listing my bedroom on Airbnb while I planned to travel.
But the first few months were unsuccessful.
It was only around April 2014 that I implemented the Airbnb idea. I listed my bedroom on Airbnb, and prepared to sleep in the living room. I imagined that guests from all over the world would pour in as soon as we listed. But nothing like that happened. We hardly received any enquiries in the first two months, the ones we did receive, didn’t convert.
We had no social proof. Our location was not close to the tourist spots of Mumbai. And there was another key ingredient missing.
As days went by, I realised how important the Airbnb experiment was for me. There was ample evidence that it was working for others. So after a few months of procrastinating, I sat down one day to figure how to make my listing more attractive. Step one was getting professional photography done. Airbnb organised this. The second thing I realised was that Airbnb wanted us to share our ‘unique story’. That’s when I sat down to write about travel, my mother and myself.
‘Mother-Son duo who love travelling and are affectionate towards other travelers’. That was our story. This was the key ingredient that was missing.
I shared quite a few things about our lives, our home and our neighbourhood in my own words. Along with the new pictures and our story, the floodgates opened. In a matter of days, the enquiries multiplied and then bookings started to grow fast. All the guests who stayed with us got to know that we were passionate travellers. With time we became superhosts on Airbnb. We made over 25,000INR on an average every month. The amount might seem insignificant to some, but it mattered because it was during a time when I had little to no income.
I didn’t know that a few years later, Airbnb would interest me as a business storytelling trainer as well.
But why am I interested in Airbnb?
That’s because it is as much a storytelling company as it is a travel one. And in this blog, I will share lessons from Airbnb and Brian Chesky’s storytelling. So let’s dive in.
We were broke designers in San Francisco…
Whenever you ask Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder, what’s Airbnb, chances are he’d start like this.
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were broke designers unable to make rent in San Francisco. That is when they heard about a popular design conference that had come to the city. Lot of designers could not afford expensive hotels and budget ones were sold out. So these roommates decided to put their spare Airbeds in the living room and offer cereal breakfast to guests. That’s why the name, Airbedandbreakfast.
They listed these beds on Craig’s List. That weekend five people stayed with them(one of them was a Mumbaikar studying in the US). Chesky claims thanks to the guests, that they were able to pay the rent and make some extra cash.
But they felt they were on to something. That’s when they decided to build Airbnb around trust. And like they say, the rest is history.
The story is interesting, but it is Chesky’s repeated narration that has turned it into an asset.
I am sure Brian Chesky understands the ability of real stories to build interest, trust, credibility. These stories help convert customers, inspire employees and to even convince investors.
The company also participated in a book on its journey. Written by Leigh Gallagher ,‘The Airbnb Story’ shares the company’s disruptive journey. It is a great read to learn from Airbnb’s journey, but also to observe how great stories build success.
So here’s the first storytelling lesson from Airbnb.
Lesson 1: Collect and narrate stories from your journey.
Magic made easy…
“You know travel is supposed to be magical, but it isn’t. But if you want it to be than you have to undertake a research project that can take as much time as the trip itself.”
I am paraphrasing words from Brian Chesky’s presentation at the launch of Airbnb Trips in 2016. It is the best product launch presentation that I have come across. Steve Jobs might have been the best product storyteller, but Chesky isn’t far behind.
The pitch at the launch of Airbnb Trips was simple. It’s so simple that you might not even realise that it is one.
‘Traveling opened my eyes. But when it comes to most trips, they promise an escape from a mundane world but you end doing things that locals never do. ‘, said Chesky.
He narrated how posters of trips promise an epic escape but that the reality is quite different. Most travelers end up with other tourists, and have to queue up everywhere they go. Perfect photographs end up becoming selfies in crowded spots.
Now that’s a problem, said Chesky. And he then set the stage by suggesting how Airbnb Trips is ‘Magic made Easy’. That travellers can finally feel like insiders and get experiences offered by locals.
This presentation was a great use of story structures to build a brand narrative. We can look at it with the simple lens of Character – Conflict – Change. Character is a traveler looking for intrepid travel experiences. But the conflict is that the actual experience of travel is mundane. Enter Airbnb Trips which helps the traveler to get unique experiences. Change is the traveler feels like he belongs to a destination and takes home more than a few pictures.
This brings me to lesson no 2 in Airbnb’s storytelling. ‘Magic Made Easy’ isn’t a story in the technical sense, it is a brand’s narrative. But like many great brands, Airbnb uses the classic story structure to speaks to its audience.
Lesson 2: Use story structures to build narratives and to design communication.
Launching products and improving user experience using storyboarding…
In the same presentation, Chesky also talked about the Hero’s Journey. This storytelling model was identified and popularised by American mythologist Joseph Campbell. Chesky also said how travel is akin to a hero’s journey and how stay is an important but a small part of it. Travelers spend majority of their time outside homes, and look for authentic experiences. Great stories consist of the hero and the villain, yes. But they also consist of a mentor who helps the hero realise his potential.
That’s what Airbnb realised, and decided to offer experiences by local hosts who are but mentors in the hero’s trip. Brian Chesky is pretty vocal about how they use storyboarding to arrive at decisions. This storyboarding exercise helped them launch a product.
But similarly they use Storyboarding to build better experience as well. Chesky was fascinated by his idol Walt Disney’s biography. It is through the book that he understood how Disney introduced the process of illustrating key moments in a story so his entire team was on the same page. Chesky felt it would be a great idea to conduct similar exercises to offer better host and guest experience on the app and offline. That motivated him to bring in illustrators from Pixar to storyboard the guest and host experience.
Storyboarding helps you understand things from a user’s perspective as you have to put yourself in their shoes. As I understand, it is now common at Airbnb to use storyboarding for all major decisions.
We could do the same to understand customers, users and even employees better. The result of storyboarding is that you can come up with better communication and decisions.
Lesson 3: Storyboard your decisions
Trigger stories…
The last story I want to share about Airbnb starts after the pandemic. Like most hospitality brands, Airbnb was hit hard. It was only a matter of time before Brian Chesky had to face the toughest situation that CEOs ever have to.
He had to lay off 25% of Airbnb’s staff for no fault of theirs.
No company has ever managed to stave off negative publicity stemming from staff layoffs. But Airbnb managed the improbable if not impossible. They got positive reviews despite this news. In fact, some blogs and websites said it was ‘a new playbook’ for companies to handle such situations.
How did this happen?
First off, Brian Chesky did not hide behind some lukewarm letter. He communicated how they arrived at the decision and about how terrible he felt. The words itself are a great example of how such letters should be written. But what triggered the stories were the actions that the company announced in the letter.
I will list down three of them here:
- The company offered three months pay and medical insurance for a year. But laid-off employees were also allowed to keep their laptops. Airbnb understood that having a machine was important in the job search process.
- One third of the Human Resource Staff’s job was to help these employees find their next gig.
- They also created a Airbnb listing type website. What was different? Rather than listing homes, this one listed their laid-off colleagues. It highlighted their work, achievements etc to make it easy for other companies to hire them.
I read a few posts myself on Linkedin when Airbnb had to take this decision. Some laid-off employees wrote positive notes about the company!
It was also heartening to see that quite a few these employees were rehired within 18 months.
That brings me to the last lesson or tip from Airbnb’s storytelling for this blog.
Lesson 4: Act according to your beliefs, but take actions that most people do not expect you to.
Travel is about stories and Airbnb does a good job of using them to fuel its business. But it is also true that all aspects of life and business are about stories. So we will all do well to stay away from boring business language and use stories to communicate.
In fact, having a story approach to life can help not just brands but also people build success. Because when you use stories, you don’t just communicate. You also add meaning to your message.
