A wise client once said: When in doubt, blame your ad agency.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky did as much in this week’s episode of the Recode Decode podcast, when host Kara Swisher asked him about his company’s tone deaf bus shelter ads that ran in San Francisco, poking fun at public services like the library.
“The ad agency approved it and one person in our company saw it,” he said.
Chesky didn’t name the agency, but TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles won the account in early September and created those ads. He explained that Airbnb was growing so fast that the campaign, an effort to counter the thought that Airbnb doesn’t pay its fair share in taxes, didn’t get enough attention internally.
Dear @Airbnb These passive-aggressive bus kiosk ads are *not cool* No love, the librarians https://t.co/rdo39E7sdz pic.twitter.com/Lf3TCAYYbw
— jessamyn west (@jessamyn) October 21, 2015
“The moment we saw it, we knew,” he told Swisher. “People were outraged and we were really embarrassed internally.”
Airbnb has been fighting a very public battle in San Francisco against Proposition F, a ballot proposal that would regulate short-term rentals. Opponents to Airbnb tried to get the board and the mayor of the city to repeal the law, and eventually, it went to a ballot. That led to a lot of misunderstanding and confusion of the issues, Chesky said.
“The crazy thing was, these posters had nothing to do with the campaign,” Chesky said in the podcast. “But it seemed like it was related to this fight and it made us look like jerks.”
Of course, brands blaming agencies is a time-honored tradition: Nissan blamed its ad agency for a tweet about Tesla last year. Earlier this year, an ad starring Indian actress Aishwarya Rai holding a dark-skinned child was called racist: Rai immediately blamed the agency. And back in 2011, when Durex tweeted a horribly sexist joke, it said its agency, Euro RCSG, was to blame.
-
Member Exclusive‘You can’t just cut a little bit’: Why this moment could force agencies to accelerate necessary changes to their business models
To survive, agencies have to change how they do business instead of making cuts here or there to manage for the next quarter.
-
‘We knew it would impact our business negatively’: How joining the Facebook boycott affected one small advertiser
For small boycotting advertisers like JibJab, staying off the Facebook advertising ecosystem permanently is untenable.
-
‘Exceeded our marketers readiness’: As e-commerce growth accelerates, Dentsu is adding a new practice to meet the demand
The commerce practice was already in the works but the pandemic and changing consumer behavior due to the pandemic accelerated it.
-
SponsoredPublishers: Assessing risk and ensuring payments in times of crisis
As the industry navigates the continued impacts of COVID-19, here’s the questions publishers should ask their programmatic partners or ad management providers to protect themselves from clawbacks and lost revenue.
-
‘Hooked on the Facebook drug’: Media buyers say smaller brands will return to the platform, but bigger brands will continue to boycott
Large consumer brands aren’t happy with Facebook’s response to the boycott so far and will likely wait until fall to reconsider the boycott.
-
Nobody in elevators, fewer gag lines: How an agency is remaking its ads to fit the coronavirus era
The process has allowed the full-service agency to enlist its post-production arm to help its clients adjust ads rather than press pause on advertising due to the ad content.
