🔌 AirBnB's Gangsta Chess Move ♟️

The Marketing Plug #17

Hello!

Return of the Chief Plug Officer.

Ready to get plugged in?

Here’s the 0.1% of marketing information today:

  • 🔌 The Rise of “Dark Social” 🚨

  • 🔌 AirBnB CEO’s Gangsta Chess Move♟️

  • 🔌 Zuck’s Old Emails đź‘€ 

🔌 The Rise of “Dark Social”

Dark Social is a big buzzword right now.

SparkToro CEO said that “76% of their traffic was from direct”

But upon inspecting it — it was mainly coming from social media.

TikTok, WhatsApp, and Slack organic in particular were 100% hidden in Google Analytics.

This is wild!

The problem is that companies stop doing social media because they don’t think it’s working❗️

🔌 AirBnB CEO’s Gangsta Chess Move ♟️

The AirBnB CEO just dropped an iconic thread:

“You told us what you don’t like about Airbnb. Here are the 50 things we’re doing about it…”


🔌 Plug Take:

1. Earned media - The thread has got 3.8 million views for free.

2. Honesty - Rather than saying “Here are 50 reasons why we’re great”

They’ve embraced their weaknesses — and said how they will improve them.

In the age of social media and flex culture, this type of honest marketing is so refreshing.

The company is worth $74.9 billion and is still publicly working on its weaknesses.

Not just 1. 50 of them.

Paul Graham’s summary is perfect:

🔌 Zuck’s Old Emails

The Plug’s favorite media: Leaked Emails

When the likes of Zuck & Co go through lawsuits, all their emails become public.

What is beautiful is you get to see their true self as they don’t think it will ever be public.

There’s no PR department putting it together for them.

Here’s a leaked email from Zuck in 2008 talking about the impact of site performance and usage.

🔌 Plug Take: Check your loading speed every damn day. Use PageSpeed Insights.

🔌 Daily Ad Plug

KFC China (2017)

âťť

"First time founders are obsessed with product. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution."

– Justin Kan, Founder of Twitch

If you enjoyed this, forward this email to a friend or click the button below.

George Mack

Chief Plug Officer 🔌