“When you think about areas where we want to grow—Latin America, Asia, certain parts of Europe—it’s really great to be able to tap into cultural icons to help fans participate with us in a different way,” Asai told ADWEEK.
Khaby Lame opens the door for Airbnb to increase its partnerships with creators, which ladders up to a broader strategy to reach different generations and fandoms. Currently, more than half of the platform’s user base is composed of millennials.
For example, Airbnb is curating a stay in Prince’s Purple Rain house in Minneapolis, Minnesota. To extend the momentum of the moment, Airbnb also provides intimate experiences during these stays, such as being able to listen to special tracks from Prince’s oeuvre in an exclusive studio session.
Buy-in from the head of Airbnb’s household
The Icons launch is not entirely new for the brand. Past Airbnb experiential activations include stays at Ikea, the last Blockbuster in the country and, most famously, Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse.
Airbnb’s in-house creative team, as well as a number of external creative partners like experiential agency Verb, have worked to created the Icon experiences. According to Asai, the brand saw 4.7 million views of experiences in 2023, all generated from earned media. There are over 50,000 experiences on the platform that range in eccentricity, from New York City food tours to hot air balloon rides in Turkey.
When it comes to gathering the right momentum and support behind these lofty initiatives, little convincing needs to be done across the Airbnb executive team. They see it as a way of tying into the brand’s origins and mission set by CEO and founder Brian Chesky, who comes from a design background.
“The executives and team members love that [Icons] is core to the DNA of Airbnb. It’s about inviting people into other people’s worlds,” Asai shared. “Airbnb started that way, with inviting people into living rooms and homes, and then it grew into tugboats and submarines and castles. And so, the idea of creating a world for people to list and for guests to participate in is very natural to us. It’s what gives us permission to do this.”
Despite having 6,900 employees (as of 2023), Asai said the organizational structure of Airbnb is similar to how a smaller company functions and enables close collaboration. In terms of the key stakeholders in the room when it comes to discussing and deciding on the Icons, Asai explained it’s a cross-collaborative effort. The decision-makers span multiple functions like communications, product and design.
