Airbnb一直是“共享經濟”的標志性成功之一。如同Uber一樣，它是一個迅速滲透到消費者意識中的年輕品牌，目前估值已達300億美元。許多人已經把Airbnb當作動詞使用：“這個周末一起去邁阿密吧。我們打算在海灘邊Airbnb一個住處！”）

在她即將出版的新書《Airbnb的故事：三個普通人如何顛覆一個行業，賺得億萬身家，并引發大量爭議》(The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions?…?and Created Plenty of Controversy)中，《財富》雜志副主編利·加拉格爾（Leigh Gallagher）帶領讀者一起見證這家公司崛起的內幕。她描述了Airbnb是如何從一個以幫助預算節約型旅游者居住在他人的起居室，以及其他數不勝數，充滿異國風情的選項（有人聽說過樹屋嗎？）而著稱的品牌，敏捷地擴展到一個為格溫妮絲·帕特洛等名人提供超高端租房服務的品牌。

Airbnb has been one of the signature successes of the “sharing economy.” Along with Uber, it’s a young brand that has penetrated consumers’ consciousness—and rung up a $30 billion valuation—so quickly that many people already use it as a verb. (As in, “Let’s go to Miami for the weekend. We’ll Airbnb a place by the beach!”) In her upcoming book, The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions?…?and Created Plenty of Controversy, Leigh Gallagher takes readers inside the company’s rise. Gallagher, an assistant managing editor at Fortune, identifies how Airbnb astutely expanded its brand from one known for putting budget travelers in people’s living rooms to endless exotic options (tree houses, anyone?) to renting ultra-high-end gems to the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow. The book explores Airbnb’s significant challenges along the way, from battles with regulators to racial discrimination and other unwelcome behavior on its platform, but also how, with 140 million “guest arrivals” since its launch in 2008, it has clearly struck a chord with consumers. In the following excerpt, Gallagher examines how cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky’s search for a mission for employees turned into a rebranding for the whole company, a revealing process that spotlights the interplay between what can be seen as a company’s soul and the way it engages with the outside world.

從對抗監管者，到種族歧視，再到其平臺上其他一些不受歡迎的行為，本書闡述了Airbnb一路走來面臨的種種挑戰。但它也描述了Airbnb是如何引起消費者共鳴的——自2008年啟動以來，Airbnb已吸引1.4億“訪客”。我們將看到，聯合創始人兼CEO布瑞恩·切斯基為員工尋找使命的旅程最終重塑了整個公司的品牌。這一給人以啟迪的過程，凸顯了一家公司的靈魂和它與外部世界打交道的方式究竟是如何相互作用的。

2013年的某個時候，Airbnb開始考慮重新定位其整個使命和重心，以更好地闡述那些讓其平臺如此獨特的元素。剛剛上任的全球社區主管道格拉斯·阿特金開始提出一系列問題：“Airbnb為什么存在？其目的是什么？它在世界上發揮什么作用？”正如阿特金所言，這些問題的答案將成為“引領整艘船前行的方向舵。”

Sometime in 2013, Airbnb started thinking about reorienting its entire mission and center of gravity to better articulate the elements that made using its platform so unique. Douglas Atkin, the company’s new global head of community, began by posing the questions, “Why does Airbnb exist? What’s its purpose? What’s its role in the world?” The answers to those questions, as Atkin puts it, would become “the rudder that guides the whole ship.”

阿特金是消費者和品牌關系方面的專家，著有《品牌崇拜》(The Culting of Brands)一書。他領銜的團隊在全球各地采訪了480名員工、客人和房東。他接二連三地聽到許多客人表示，“他們最不想扮演的角色就是游客。”他們覺得，這是一個過于被動的身份。Airbnb的客戶希望接觸人和文化；他們想成為內部人。

一個想法開始浮現：“歸屬感”。到2014年年中，該公司已經決定圍繞這個概念重新定位。Airbnb有了一個新的使命宣言：讓世界各地的人們覺得他們可以“歸屬于任何地方”。

經過幾個月的構思和改善，該公司發布了一個象征這項使命的新標識：一個名為“Bélo”，彎彎曲曲，非常可愛的形狀。它是由剛剛從可口可樂跳槽至Airbnb的首席營銷官喬納森·米爾登霍爾命名的。米爾登霍爾還說服公司創始人將“歸屬于任何地方”從一個內部使命宣言擴展到公司的官方口號。

2014年7月，Airbnb推出這個新品牌，以及重新設計的移動應用和網站。切斯基在Airbnb官網發表了一篇洋溢著理性光輝的文章，對這個概念進行了一番解釋：很久以前，城市曾經是鄉村。但隨著大規模生產和工業化的到來，這種個人感受被“大規模生產和非個人旅行體驗”取代，一路走來，“人們不再相互信任。”

Atkin is an expert on the relationship between consumers and brands and the author of The Culting of Brands. He and his team interviewed 480 employees, guests, and hosts around the world. Again and again, he says, he heard guests saying that “the last thing they wanted to be is tourists.” That felt too passive to them. Airbnb customers wanted to engage with people and culture; they wanted to be insiders.

A single idea began to emerge: the notion of “belonging.” By mid-2014 the company had settled on a repositioning around this concept. Airbnb had a new mission statement: to make people around the world feel like they could “belong anywhere.”

The company had a new logo to symbolize this: a cute squiggly shape it called the “Bélo,” the result of months of conceiving and refining. It had been named by Airbnb’s chief marketing officer, Jonathan Mildenhall, who had recently joined from Coca-Cola KO -0.05% . Mildenhall also persuaded the founders to expand “Belong anywhere” from an internal mission statement to the company’s official tagline.

In July 2014, Airbnb introduced the rebrand, as well as a redesign of its mobile app and website. Chesky explained the concept in a cerebral, high-minded essay on Airbnb’s website: A long time ago, he wrote, cities used to be villages. But as mass production and industrialization came along, that personal feeling was replaced by “mass-produced and impersonal travel experiences,” and along the way, “people stopped trusting each other.”

他寫道，Airbnb代表著比旅行更大的東西；它將代表社區和關系，并借助技術的力量，將人們聚集在一起。在Airbnb，人們可以會見“普天之下渴望歸屬感的人。”經過仔細構思的新標識Bélo自身，像一顆心、一個位置別針，以及Airbnb中的“A”。它設計得非常簡單，以便于任何人都可以繪畫。事實上，該公司邀請人們繪制自己的標識版本。Airbnb宣稱，它代表著4種事物：人、地方、愛和Airbnb。

說Airbnb充滿理想主義，可能有點輕描淡寫。說得委婉些，媒體持懷疑態度。科技博客TechCrunch聲稱“歸屬于任何地方”是一種“嬉皮士概念”，其他媒體則想知道，人們使用Airbnb服務，究竟是在追尋一種特別溫暖，但也非常模糊的“歸屬感”，還是僅僅因為他們只是想找一個便宜且非常酷的安身之所。許多媒體對Bélo大加嘲諷——與其說是諷刺它代表的理想主義情懷，倒不如說是諷刺它的形狀。他們說，Bélo看上去像是乳房，臀部，既像男性生殖器，又像女性生殖器。在24小時內，輕博客網站Tumblr策劃并發布了各種充滿性意味的解釋。現已加入《紐約時報》的記者凱蒂·本納發推稱，“對于臨時居所的描述，沒有什么能夠跟Airbnb選擇的陰道-屁股-子宮新標識相提并論。”

我起初也滿腹狐疑——不是懷疑這個標識，而是懷疑“歸屬感”概念。我認為這意味著與那位居住在你租賃的空間的人共度一段時光。在我為數不多的Airbnb使用經歷中，我還沒有遇見或者看到我的房東，也不想這樣。最主要的原因是，我想省錢。

Airbnb, he wrote, would stand for something much bigger than travel; it would stand for community and relationships and using technology for the purpose of bringing people together. Airbnb would be the one place people could go to meet the “universal human yearning to belong.” The Bélo itself was carefully conceived to resemble a heart, a location pin, and the “A” in Airbnb. It was designed to be simple, so that anyone could draw it. Indeed, the company invited people to draw their own versions of the logo—which, it was announced, would stand for four things: people, places, love, and Airbnb.

To say Airbnb can be idealistic is an understatement. The media were skeptical, to put it mildly. TechCrunch called “Belong anywhere” a “hippy-dippy concept,” while others wondered whether it was really warm and fuzzy “belonging” that drove people to Airbnb or whether they just wanted a cheap and cool place to stay. Media outlets lampooned the Bélo, not for its idealism so much as its shape, which they said looked alternately like breasts, buttocks, and both male and female genitalia all at once. Within 24 hours the sexual interpretations of the logo had been curated and posted on a Tumblr blog. “Nothing says temporary home like the vagina-butt-uterus abstraction that Airbnb chose as its new logo,” tweeted reporter Katie Benner, now of the New York Times.

I, too, was skeptical—not of the logo, but of the “belonging” concept—at first. I thought it meant spending time with the person who lived in the space you rented. In the few times I had used Airbnb, I hadn’t met or seen my host and didn’t want to; I mainly wanted to save money.

但在Airbnb重塑品牌的背景下，這種“歸屬感”并不一定意味著，與你的房東一起喝茶，吃曲奇餅干。它有著更廣泛的含義：它意味著走進你采用其他旅行方式可能看不到的社區，駐留在你通常無法駐留的地方，睡在其他人的空間，經歷一段房東“款待”你的體驗，無論你是否見過房東。有一次，我通過Airbnb在費城里滕豪斯廣場附近一個破舊的步行街上預定了一個住處。我小心翼翼地推開房門。映入眼簾的是一套迷人的單間公寓：高聳的天花板；墻上擺滿了書；舒適簡約的裝飾風格；一串閃爍的裝飾燈懸掛在壁爐上。我喜歡“珍”布置的一切，從她的藏書，到她拍松和折疊的毛巾，再到她留給我的手寫卡片。（珍和我似乎擁有同樣的審美品味，但這正是我選擇這套房間的原因所在。）

無論新聞界對Airbnb的品牌重塑有何看法，廣大用戶們似乎特別欣賞。在接下來的幾個月中，超過8萬人上網發布他們自己設計的標識。即使對于一些更大的品牌來說，這種消費者參與度也是可望不可即的。Airbnb甚至主動擁抱新標識引發的喧嘩。作為“歸屬感”之旅的領路人，阿特金后來稱之為“機會平等的生殖器”。

But “belonging” in the Airbnb-rebrand context didn’t have to be about having tea and cookies with the person whose place you’re staying in. It was much broader: It meant venturing into neighborhoods that you might not otherwise be able to see, staying in places you wouldn’t normally be able to, bunking in someone else’s space, and having an experience that person “hosted” for you, regardless of whether you ever laid eyes on him or her. When I booked a place through Airbnb in Philadelphia, I warily pushed open the door to an apartment in a run-down walk-up in Rittenhouse Square to find an inviting studio with high ceilings; walls lined with books; cozy, minimalist decor; and a string of twinkly lights hanging over the fireplace. I liked everything about “Jen’s” place, from her book collection to the towels she’d fluffed and folded, to the handwritten card she left for me. (It helped that Jen and I had the same aesthetic taste, but then that’s precisely why I picked her listing.)

Whatever the press thought of the rebrand, Airbnb’s users seemed to get it. Over the next few months, more than 80,000 people went online and designed their own versions of the logo, a rate of consumer engagement that would be considered off the charts by larger brands. Airbnb even embraced the logo hubbub. Atkin, who spearheaded the journey to “belonging,” later referred to it as “equal-opportunity genitalia.”

作為一家公司，除員工和客人之外，Airbnb還需要招募第三類支持者：出租房屋和公寓的人。僅僅讓房東簽約并提供他們的空間是不夠的；這家公司必須慫恿他們竭力提供一種良好的體驗。Airbnb的房源數量之多，甚至連全球最大的連鎖酒店也望塵莫及，但它既不擁有或控制任何庫存，也無法控制任何一位房東的行為。

從創業伊始，幾位創始人就知道這一點。他們當時很難說服人們發布各自的居住空間。但直到2012年底，當切斯基讀到一期《康奈爾酒店季刊》（這本學術期刊的出版方是著名的康奈爾大學酒店管理學院）時，他才開始更加認真地思考該公司提供的體驗。他判定，Airbnb亟需經歷一種更深刻的變革——從一家科技公司轉變為一家酒店公司。

不久之后，切斯基讀完了一本書：《登峰造極：運用馬斯洛理論提振士氣》(Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow)。其作者是生活樂趣精品連鎖酒店（Joie de Vivre）創始人奇普·康利。在他于2010年售出多數股權之前，這家連鎖酒店已擴展到38家。

As a company, Airbnb had a third constituency it needed to enlist: not just employees and guests, but the people who rent out their houses and apartments. It wasn’t enough just to get the hosts to sign on and to offer their spaces; the company had to get them to work hard to offer a good experience. The number of Airbnb listings dwarfs the quantity of rooms in even the largest hotel chains, but it neither owns nor controls any of the inventory, nor the behavior of any of the people offering it.

The founders knew this from the earliest days, when persuading people to list their spaces was a struggle. But it wasn’t until late 2012, when Chesky read an issue of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, the journal of the esteemed Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, that he started thinking more seriously about the experience the company was offering. He decided they needed to transform Airbnb more deeply from a tech company into a hospitality company.

Shortly after that, Chesky read Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow. The book’s author was Chip Conley, founder of the Joie de Vivre boutique-hotel chain, which grew to 38 boutique properties before he sold a majority stake in 2010.

康利儼然已成為一位大師。在《登峰造極》一書中，他闡釋了在911恐怖襲擊事件和互聯網泡沫破裂之后，他是如何通過將心理學家亞伯拉罕·馬斯洛的需求層次理論應用到企業和個人轉型，最終拯救了自己的公司。馬斯洛認為，為了充分實現人類的潛能，他們的身體和心理需求必須首先獲得滿足。在需求層次金字塔上，食物和水處于最底部，自我實現位居最高層。在康利身上，切斯基既看到了精明的商業頭腦和高超的酒店經營能力，或許也覺察到了一種令他惺惺相惜的理想主義情懷。康利表示，他希望每位客人三天后離開時，能成為一個“更好的自己。”

切斯基竭力游說康利，最終在2013年秋季將其招致麾下，出任Airbnb公司酒店和戰略全球主管。康利尤為迷戀推動酒店業民主化這一挑戰。他認為，酒店業已經“被公司化了”，他希望“把它帶回根源。”

Conley had become something of a guru. In Peak, he explained how he had saved his company in the wake of 9/11 and the dotcom bust by applying the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—the pyramid of physical and psychological needs humans must have met in order to achieve their full potential, with food and water at the bottom and self-actualization at the top—to corporate and individual transformation. Chesky saw in Conley both business and hotel savvy and perhaps a kindred idealism. (Conley talked about wanting his guests to check out three days later as a “better version of themselves.”)

Chesky lobbied Conley and eventually recruited him into a full-time position, in the fall of 2013, as global head of hospitality and strategy. Conley was fascinated by the challenge of democratizing hospitality, which had become “corporatized.” He wanted to “take it back to its roots.”

康利先后趕赴25個城市發表演講，并提供一些訣竅，以幫助公寓住戶與他們的客棧老板溝通。他建立了一個中央化的酒店教育機制，制定了一系列標準，并創建了一個博客、一個時事通訊和一個在線社區中心。房東們可以在那里學習和分享最佳實踐。他開發了一個輔導計劃，讓經驗豐富的房東向新人傳授待客之道。

如今在Airbnb說明書上詳細闡述的指令和建議包括：力求在24小時內回復預訂申請。接待客人前，請盡量確保他們的旅行計劃符合你的“待客風格”；比如，如果有人正在尋找一位親力親為的房東，而你是個注重隱私的人，這或許就不是最好的匹配。經常溝通，并提供詳細指示。確定非常清晰的“房規”——如果你希望旅行者脫鞋或者不吸煙的話。徹底清潔每個房間，特別是浴室和廚房。床上用品和毛巾應該是嶄新的。想超越這些基本要求？不妨考慮為房間布置一些鮮花，或者在客人辦理入住手續時提供一些款待的禮物，比如一杯葡萄酒或一個花籃。他說，房東要盡力做好這些事情，即使他或她在客人逗留期間并不在家。

2014年11月，在Airbnb啟動“歸屬于任何地方”使命四個月之后，切斯基再一次與阿特金詳談。這位CEO表示他很喜歡“歸屬于任何地方”，并且相信這將是該公司未來100年的使命。但他仍然有一些迫切的問題：這句話真正意味著什么？你如何衡量它？它是如何發生的？

Conley traveled to 25 cities, giving talks and offering tips to help apartment dwellers channel their inner innkeeper. He set up a centralized hospitality-education effort, created a set of standards, and started a blog, a newsletter, and an online community center where hosts could learn and share best practices. He developed a mentoring program wherein experienced hosts could teach new ones good hospitality.

Among the mandates and suggestions now articulated in Airbnb’s materials: Aim to respond to booking queries within 24 hours. Before accepting guests, try to make sure their idea for their trip matches your “hosting style”; for example, if someone is looking for a hands-on host and you’re private, it may not be the best match. Communicate often and provide detailed directions. Establish any “house rules” (if you’d like travelers to take their shoes off or not smoke) very clearly. Clean every room thoroughly, especially the bathroom and kitchen. Bedding and towels should be fresh. Want to go beyond the basics? Consider sprucing up the room with fresh flowers or providing a treat upon check-in, like a glass of wine or a welcome basket. Do these things, he says, even if you’re not present during the stay.

In November 2014, four months after Airbnb launched “Belong anywhere” as its mission, Chesky went back to Atkin. He said he loved “Belong anywhere,” and he truly felt it would be the company’s mission for the next 100 years. But he still had some pressing questions: What does the phrase actually mean? How do you measure it? How does it happen?

切斯基派遣阿特金踏上另一趟訪問焦點小組的旅程，一探究竟。與另外300位房東和客人談話之后，他獲得了這些問題的答案：“歸屬于任何地方”并不是一個單一時刻；它是人們在借助Airbnb旅行時經歷的一種轉變。這家公司已經將其使命編纂為“歸屬于任何地方的轉變之旅。”其內涵是：當旅行者離開家時，他們感到孤獨。到達Airbnb租屋時，他們覺得自己被房東接受，并受到悉心照顧。他們隨即產生一種如同在家中般的安全感。

Chesky dispatched Atkin on another focus-group odyssey to figure it out. When Atkin came back, after talking to another 300 hosts and guests, he had an answer: Belonging anywhere wasn’t a single moment; it was a transformation people experienced when they traveled on Airbnb. The company has codified this as the “belong anywhere transformation journey.” It goes like this: When travelers leave their homes, they feel alone. They reach their Airbnb, and they feel accepted and taken care of by their host. They then feel safe to be the same kind of person they are when they’re at home.

當這種情況發生時，他們覺得更加自由，成為一個更好更完整的自己，他們的旅程是完整的。這是Airbnb的行話。盡管在我們這些局外者看來，這些話聽起來可能有些做作，但許多人表示，這正是助推Airbnb起飛的重要原因。對于這種愿景，最真誠的Airbnb信徒有著一種宗教般的崇拜。（在他的焦點小組探訪之旅中，阿特金在雅典碰到的一位房東在其臥室墻壁上繪制著“歸屬于任何地方”字樣。有位韓國房東甚至將她的名字改為一個意為“歡迎來我家”的韓語詞匯。）但是，無論對于普通旅行者而言，這是不是一趟“轉變之旅”，Airbnb已經獲得了巨大的成功。成就這家公司的，絕不僅僅是價格低廉，以及該平臺能夠幫助旅行者很容易走進奇異空間這一事實。Airbnb觸及到更大、更深刻的東西。

在這個相互分離的世界上，展示一些人性或者接受某種人性表達的機會，已經變得非常罕見。這是另一個使得Airbnb（和其他短期租賃服務）不同于所謂“共享經濟”其他方面的元素。就其核心而言，Airbnb涉及最親密的人際交往：訪問其他人的家、睡在他們的床上，使用他們的浴室。

這恰恰是如此多人極度反感Airbnb，從來不想使用這種服務的原因。但也正是這一點，讓Airbnb顯得如此獨特。當你在TaskRabbit雇傭一個人幫你修復一個裂縫，或者當你坐進一輛配備空調的黑色轎車，靜靜地前往機場時，這種“共享”并不存在。更重要的是，這正是Airbnb不同于Uber、Lyft和其他任何共享經濟同行的地方。有一天，與格雷洛克風險投資公司營銷合伙人麗莎·施賴伯聊天時，她用極其精煉的語言總結了這種區別：“Uber是交易。Airbnb是人性。”（財富中文網）

作者：Leigh Gallagher

譯者：Kevin

When that happens, they feel like freer, better, more complete versions of themselves, and their journey is complete. This is Airbnb-speak, and while it may sound hokey to the rest of us, many would say this is a huge reason Airbnb took off. There is a cultlike devotion among Airbnb’s truest believers, who embrace this vision. (During his focus-group travels exploring the meaning of Airbnb, Atkin encountered one host in Athens who had painted “Belong anywhere” on his bedroom wall, and another in Korea who had changed her name to a Korean phrase meaning “welcome to my house.”) But whether or not it is a “transformation journey” for the average traveler, Airbnb has enjoyed success that is about something more than just low prices and easy access to quirky spaces. It touches on something bigger and deeper.

The opportunity to show some humanity or to receive some expression of humanity from others has become rare in our disconnected world. This is another element about Airbnb (and other short-term-rental services) that makes it different from other aspects of the so-called sharing economy. At its core, Airbnb involves the most intimate human interactions: visiting people in their homes, sleeping in their beds, using their bathrooms.

That is precisely what makes it objectionable to so many people who can never imagine using it. But it’s also what makes it unique. This kind of “sharing” is not present when you hire a person to fix a leak on TaskRabbit, or when you get into someone’s air-conditioned black car for a silent ride to the airport. More than anything else, it is this aspect of Airbnb that distinguishes it from Uber, Lyft, and any other of its sharing-economy peers. Elisa Schreiber, marketing partner at Greylock Partners, an investor in the company, summarized this distinction concisely after we got to talking about it one day. “Uber is transactional,” she said. “Airbnb is humanity.”?