diversity and inclusion, environmental impact and sustainability.
As well as the overarching purpose P&G has given itself at the
corporate level, each of the company’s brands, from Old Spice to
Pampers, from Tide to Always, has its proper purpose. Always
is a striking illustration of how powerful a purpose can be for a
brand. “Empower girls and women.”21 I have chosen the Always
example, even if it’s well known, because the expression of its
purpose is founded from the outset on one of the most universal
insights a brand has ever exploited: the fear of failure.
A global study revealed that, all over the world, the stereo-
types linked to gender affect girls most when they reach puberty
because that is the moment when the differences between boys
and girls are amplified and become more perceptible. Leader-
ship, power, and strength, for instance, are associated with boys,
while fragility, weakness, and emotionalism are associated with
girls. These prejudices end up negatively altering the perception
girls have of themselves, which affects their behavior. They lose
their self-confidence.
The brand took on these stereotypes, using the expression
“like a girl.” This phrase is often used pejoratively to describe
someone seen as being too feeble or emotional, but Always trans-
formed it into a positive statement. The brand held a simulated
casting session with young men and women and prepubescent
girls and boys. The participants were asked to run or fight “like a
girl.” Young men, women, and little boys imitated girls running
or fighting in a weak way, acting in stereotypical behavior that
presents women as weak. But the pre-pubescent girls reacted
completely differently. They ran and fought as hard as they could,
with confidence, pride, and conviction. Cleary, their perception
had not yet been formatted by prejudice and stereotypes.
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The #LikeAGirl campaign has been seen more than 90 million
times at the time of writing, and became the number-two viral video
globally. In a study conducted after the campaign was launched,
76 percent of people said they perceived the expression “like a girl”
to be positive after watching the videos, while only 19 percent had
that impression before watching. Who would have believed that a
brand of sanitary pad, usually a low-involvement category, would
drive such huge levels of engagement? Herein lies the interesting
thing about a sense of purpose: It is a concept that can apply to any
product, however it touches life. The most everyday products—a
dishwashing liquid, a detergent, or a sanitary napkin—can have a
sense of purpose. There are no exceptions, even in the industrial
world. Let’s take the example of Air Liquide, a French world-
wide leader in the production of industrial gasses. The company
gave itself the purpose of “making the town breathe better.”22 Air
pollution, accelerated through climate change, has become one of
the principal factors of mortality in cities around the world. Air
Liquide has invented processes that allow millions of people in
cities to enjoy better air quality. The company does not just sell
excellent industrial gasses, but it also concerns itself with vital envi-
ronmental issues. Air Liquide wants towns to be able to breathe.
Coming back to P&G, I was invited to Cincinnati a few
months after Pritchard’s speech to attend a seminar on the
theme of purpose. All the brand leaders gave presentations on
the purposes they had assigned to their respective brands and it
seems to me that the company doctrine on the subject has since
become quite refined. Pritchard is more than ever certain that
“if the purpose is disconnected from your business model, then
it’s not sustainable.”23 Among the whole panoply of causes P&G
has embraced, it is up to each brand to evaluate the one that best
fits its particular personality in the most meaningful way. What
cause makes the most sense for it?
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The delicate balance in the allocation of marketing resources
has then to be determined. As a former P&G executive com-
mented, “Purpose-inspired growth is a wonderful slogan, but
it doesn’t help allocate assets.”24 Looking for values of a higher
order is so involving that it could lead the over-enthusiastic
marketer to lean too heavily on brand purpose and lose sight of
product performance. Always was able to avoid this trap. On the
one hand, the brand pushes as hard as possible on its purpose
to empower women and girls across the world. On the other
hand, it continues to advertise the qualities of absorption and
durability of its products. As such, the brand is both purpose
driven and product led. Achieving this balance is a matter of
dosage—how resources between the two levels are allocated—
which reinforces the idea that purpose must emanate in some
way from the product. The bond between purpose and benefit
should be self-evident.
Years have passed since Pritchard’s 2010 speech and his
rallying cry has not escaped the fate of many widely circulated
messages. Words, having been used indiscriminately, often inac-
curately, can end up being robbed of their original meaning.
Like disruption, purpose is one of these words. As of 2013, Advertising Age ran an article entitled “Is the Era of Purpose-Driven
Ads (Finally) Over?”25 The pervasive usage of the word has made
it a staple of marketing jargon. It has become a buzzword.
And yet, I believe the concept has never been more rele-
vant. Purpose reinforces the essence of the brand. It enriches a
product’s benefits by surrounding it with context. It associates
the brand with a motivating social cause. From the moment
a brand is given a clear sense of purpose, it has fuel for being
inventive in what it does and in how it communicates about
what it does. A great purpose gives a brand a disproportionate
share of voice.
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Confirming Pritchard’s viewpoint, the Kantar “Purpose 2020”
study26 conducted in April 2018, shows that “brands with a high
sense of purpose have experienced a brand valuation increase
of 175% over the past twelve years, compared to the median
growth rate of 86%.” In broader terms, the value of brands with
purpose grows twice as fast as the average. The findings speak
for themselves.
Chapter 14
Brian Chesky
ON BRAND BUILDING AND
DISRUPTIVE DATA
airbnb does not settle for just putting guests in contact
with hosts; it dreams of a world where anyone can belong
anywhere. A world without strangers, now that’s a promising
purpose. A little bit of utopia can’t do any harm.
When Brian Chesky first met venture capitalists in the sum-
mer of 2008, none believed for an instant in his project. Chesky
recalls, “People did not think strangers
would stay with other
strangers. They thought it was crazy.” One of the investors even
went as far as saying, “Brian, I hope that’s not the only idea you’re
working on.”1 These doubts did not stop Airbnb from launching
the first peer-to-peer accommodation platform and becoming
the huge success we know today. To summarize Chesky, this was
accomplished by “bringing the world back to the place where it
feels like a village again.”2
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Since 2008, 150 million travelers have stayed in three million
different hosts’ homes in nearly 200 countries. The company is
now present in 34,000 cities.
It took Chesky great resilience to achieve this. He needed
to overcome the tempestuous opposition of numerous towns,
involving legal battles against all sorts of prohibition. And it
looks as if this will be a never-ending struggle. Following a series
of incidents, he had to completely change his strategy in just a
few days and, contrary to what he said previously, he declared
himself partially responsible for what happens in hosts’ homes.
Finally, after a case of racial discrimination in North Carolina,
he quickly established company policies, some of which went
much further than federal law requires. The company always
tries to tackle complaints head on, whatever sort they may be.
The future of its business model depends on it.
I chose to talk about Chesky in this chapter for two reasons.
First, he is the very archetype of the disruptive thinker. His
home-sharing company has shaken the hospitality business
from top to bottom. Second, in Silicon Valley, where the word
marketing does not always get good press, he has managed, in
a few years, to build an iconic brand, one that was reportedly
valued at $31 billion as of March 2017.
Shaping an Iconic Brand
At the beginning, adopting a brand-building approach may not
have been the obvious route for Chesky. As Fast Company ex-
plains, “There is a belief in much of Silicon Valley that you don’t
need to invest in brand marketing because your product itself is
the brand.”3
And yet, after initial success with early adopters and word of
mouth, the time came to scale up the business. To accomplish
Brian Chesky
133
this, Airbnb had to evolve from appealing almost exclusively
to metropolitan hipsters—people who think it’s cool to use
the brand—to more lucrative audiences like young families or
baby boomers. These groups still needed to be convinced. Neil
Barrie, co-founder and managing partner at 21st Century Brands,
comments, “You need a whole different set of tactics and tools to
do that. Every brand faces that moment when they have to cross
the chasm.”4
This is a vital step for brands, like Airbnb, that are not pro-
tected by any patented technological IP. Having a strong brand
helped the company to outperform competitors such as Expedia
or Priceline, and to protect itself from the many start-ups trying
hard to invade its market space.
For a few years now, Airbnb has been using advertising to
illustrate the mission it has adopted: “Create a world where any-
one can belong anywhere.”5 The brand’s campaigns told travelers
they could act as locals. In one of the commercials, the voiceover
gives visitors this advice: “Don’t go to Paris. Don’t tour Paris.
And please don’t do Paris.” After a montage of selfies and of the
city’s most famous landmarks, the ad concludes by encouraging
viewers to “Live in Paris.”6 That Airbnb campaign was the first
time the company was able to describe what it actually does in a
simple and appealing way. As Nancy King, its director of brand
strategy, pointed out, “That was the first example of product and
marketing, two sides of the business, working together against a
shared idea.”7
To further substantiate its brand idea, and to continue cap-
turing the attention of young generations, Airbnb is always
pursuing novel initiatives. For example, in July 2015, when
Cuba and the United States restored diplomatic relations after
54 years, the company launched its “No Borders”8 campaign.
It announced that 1,000 Cuban homes were available for book-
ing and it published a full-page ad in leading newspapers like
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The New York Times comparing this significant moment to
another historical one, when mankind first set foot on the moon.
The ad, which features America’s and Cuba’s respective flags side
by side, read: “One giant leap for man’s kindness.”9 President
Barack Obama’s endorsement helped turn Airbnb’s initiative
into a great business opportunity. The number of Cuban hosts
grew from 1,000 to 4,000 within a year.
More recently, Airbnb initiated another very promising mar-
keting idea. It rolled out new in-app features, which help travel-
ers get a real taste of what day-to-day life is like for people who
actually inhabit the cities they will be visiting. Airbnb guidebooks
are fueled and filled by locals, not tourists. Unlike TripAdvisor,
where clients rate the hotels, in Airbnb’s guides, locals help users
discover what there is to know about their neighborhoods. This
role, going well beyond just connecting hosts and guests.
Airbnb has thus joined the ranks of iconic brands such as
Coca-Cola, Nike, Starbucks, and Disney, to mention just a few,
which are admired both as businesses and social phenomena.
They have become cults, because each, in its own way and at a
moment in time, has impacted popular culture. They have known
how to be in sync with their times. Today, it’s up to other brands
to have a chance of becoming legends. Apple, which ruled the
start of the century, comes to mind first, but Facebook, Google,
and Airbnb are close behind.
Airbnb’s business model is so disruptive and appreciated by
its users that you might say the brand was already iconic before
it started advertising. That’s possible, but I believe that the
advertising the brand created helped accelerate its path toward
iconic status. For a company that doesn’t own its main tangible
asset—rooms for rent—the ad campaigns have added value to
what does constitute its most valuable intangible asset: its brand.
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the Single Disruptive Data
Every step a consumer takes on the path to conversion is scruti-
nized: completing a lead-generation form, downloading an app,
clicking on a cookie, using a voucher code, viewing a video, lik-
ing a Facebook page, visiting an e-commerce platform. Brands
collate every kind of action imaginable: logins, friends’ requests,
clicks, page views, search entries, and so on. To manage all this
information, marketing now relies heavily on data science.
Airbnb is no exception. It uses big data to enhance user
experience. Ricardo Bion, the company’s data science manager
notes, “Airbnb is a data-informed company. We think data is
the voice of our customers.”10 For instance, Airbnb provides
price tips to hosts so, like hotels, they can charge higher prices
when demand is strong and lower rates when it is not. Airbnb’s
user interface also allows hosts to establish price ranges they are
willing to accept. Another algorithm predicts the likelihood of
a host accepting a visitor’s booking inquiry. The model learns
from past decisions to predict future ones. There is no limit to
how Airbnb can put to use the tons of data it gathers every day,
from both hosts and guests.
This is what all Internet giants do. Uber constantly geo-
locates its clients and is aware of all their daily movements.
Amazon can predict its customers’ future purchases and prepare
their packages, even before they’ve placed their orders. Netflix
knows, ahead of its viewers, which films they are going to enjoy.
Apart from all the positive benefits of big data, there is also the
risk of companies becoming submerged by the data flood. The
Harvard Business Review issued this warning in one of its articles:
“Don’t let Big Data bury your brand.”11 This is a particular danger
for companies using a disproportionate amount of data to drive
purchases. Beyond pushing sales, data can serve as a great lever
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for brand building when it’s used wisely. The great opportunity
does not just come from exploiting, aggregating, and visualizing
tens or even hundreds of bits of data. The real challenge—and
route to success—is to isolate that single piece of data that will
influence everything and help identify the insight that will guide
the building of the brand. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,”
which seeks to boost women’s self-esteem, is a perfect illustration.
Dove’s marketing is based on discovering the insight that only
4 percent of women said they found themselves beautiful.
Having such data gives you a game-changing springboard.
It’s why I call it disruptive data, data that is decisive, pivotal, and
critical. Procter & Gamble’s Always is another example of this.
Seventy-five percent of young women, upon reaching the age
of puberty, say that the social networks where many users brag