Why ‘Live Like a Local’ Marketing Is a Slap in the Face of Most Travelers
Photo Credit: Tourists at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Campaigns encouraging visitors to "live like a local" forget that they have different priorities than locals. Skift
Skift Take
Marketing the benefits of "living like a local" avoids the reality that most visitors live like a tourist — and that's not a bad thing.
I want so badly to like the Airbnb ad campaign "Don't go there."
I want to in part because I have tremendous respect for the Airbnb organization, for the people who work there (like Chip Conley, and Jonathan Mildenhall), and for the work that TBWA\Chiat\Day does. But for all that I think the campaign largely succeeds in its efforts to create a community of a certain type of traveler (who, let's face it, are basically just more affluent hostelers), and for all that I'm sure various ad metrics will prove its successitude, it fails for me for one big reason – it leaves out an enormous segment of the population.
Maybe that's the point, but for a brand that kind of seems to claim inclusivity as a brand value, the fact that they are actively dismissing and eschewing – and yes, excluding – such a big group seems to create pretty serious dissonance.
Who's the big group that's being excluded? Watch the commercials again. It's people who take selfies at the Eiffel Tower, who tour
