Airbnb’s New Ad Is Creeping Everyone Out [Video]
Airbnb’s new ad campaign, named “Is Mankind,” launched recently, and it’s creeping everyone out.
The intention of the ad campaign was to celebrate kindness in the community. However the ad quickly went viral on social media due to its ominous music and creepy undertones. The ad shows a toddler walking alone in a dark hallway to a door, accompanied by a questionable soundtrack. Angela Basset’s voice whispers lines through the minute-long ad which only serves to heighten the creep factor of the video, as Metro noted. To make matters worse, Airbnb’s social media team decided to take things further and tweet out some of the lines from the ad, which is getting creepier by the minute.
Twitter exploded with reactions to the campaign by the accommodation booking app. As The Drum noted, while some found it hilarious, others were disgusted and a little freaked out. The tweets that had lines from the ad such as “Go look through their windows, so you can understand their views” had a number of responses with one member quipping, “Wear their skin so you can know their soul” and the hilarious, “Go through their underwear, see if it fits.”
Go look through their windows, so you can understand their views.
— Airbnb (@Airbnb) July 14, 2015
.@Airbnb Wear their skin, so you can know their soul. — Richard Cook (@RichardCook2) July 15, 2015
@Airbnb Go through their underwear, see if it fits.
— Oh no, it’s Steve! (@OhNoItsSteve) July 15, 2015
The equally weird line “Sleep in their beds so you may know their dreams” also had its share of comments, with one user asking if this was before or after he kills them and another questioning if the Airbnb account had been hacked.
Sleep in their beds, so you may know their dreams. — Airbnb (@Airbnb) July 14, 2015
@tabithyst is this before or after he kills them?
— Sorcha-Eilís (@Shawolahan) July 15, 2015
@sandofsky @Airbnb hacked? — Mike Cohen (@mike3k) July 14, 2015
“Sit at their tables so you may know their tastes” had one user wondering about their bathrooms and another user questioning the seriousness of the campaign.
Sit at their tables, so you can know their tastes.
— Airbnb (@Airbnb) July 14, 2015
@Airbnb What about their bathrooms? ? — Patrick L. LE (@PatrickLamLe) July 14, 2015
@airbnb @tomcoates Are they serious about this campaign or is there an ’empathic quotes’ engine / room full of monkeys churning it out?
— dan phillips (@dannyboy) July 15, 2015
The explanation for the ad campaign was that Airbnb hosts are everyday humans who allow strangers into their homes for a night. This is an act of kindness. As The Next Web reported, Airbnb marketing chief Jonathan Mildenhall has responded to the criticism to the ad.
“We took kindness as something that is transformational about staying with an Airbnb host, and working with our agency tried to build a campaign around the value of kindness.”
The Huffington Post noted that Maria Rodriguez, the Head of Global Communications, also spoke about the campaign, which she says “explores the kindness of man… because when we trust in the kindness of our fellow man, we discover that the world isn’t such a scary place after all.”
Airbnb are taking it in stride and stretching their campaign to include “Womankind,” as well as “Transkind.”
[Photo: Wikimedia, Airbnb.com]
