Voyage with Airbnb

I saw the amazing pools ad from Airbnb on a few of my platforms. Using Coolio's song and stills of water slide fun, Airbnb convinces us to use their business to plan our next sweet vacay.

This ad is simple. Song and stills and not a lot of words. I think the stills are a creative way to get people to watch. They’re cut together to be engaging and enticing. It made me think about how fun it would be to go to a nice warm water park instead of the snowy landscape I've been driving through.

Because this ad features children having fun, I automatically thought about the other vacation commercials I see, especially the cruise ship commercials. The ones where they cut from clips of kids having fun to the parents relaxing together in a spa or over a bottle of wine. In those, they are blatantly telling parents that cruises are a great way to ditch your kids somewhere else on the boat to engage in more adult activities. In this Airbnb commercial, the “dad” seems to be having fun on the slide with the kids. I’m not a parent. Maybe a different part of the boat is exactly what many parents want. But the difference made this add more noticeable to me. It reminded me of the vacations I went on with my parents where we all went swimming together.

The reason for the message is obvious. Use Airbnb to book your next vacation. It looks professional and clean, probably to draw in those people who wouldn’t otherwise stay at someone else’s place. It's also showcasing their "amazing pools" feature in the categories you may be looking for in a hotel. Or in this case, an Airbnb.