Nancy King

VP Marketing @airbnb. Design lover. Occasional Tweeter.

[Nancy King @nanking]

A very funny, but maybe too painfully real, perspective on living in SF right now. https://t.co/DNApmRw2TZ

[Nancy King @nanking]

@united I’m generally a Delta person but could convert me.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

September 1997. Steve Jobs stands before Apple employees and tells them he's been up until 3am finishing an ad. He's been back at the company for eight weeks. Apple lost $1 billion that year. Three months earlier, WIRED put Apple's logo on its cover, wrapped in barbed wire, with the word "Pray."

He starts by saying what he's found since coming back. He couldn't figure out Apple's own product line. He spent weeks trying to understand which model was which and how they fit together. He talked to customers. They couldn't figure it out either. He cut 70% of the product roadmap. People whose projects were canceled were, in his words, "three feet off the ground with excitement" because, for the first time in years, someone told them where the company was going.

Then he says something about marketing that changed how every tech company thinks about advertising.

He says Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. But when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. Nike never talks about their products in ads. Never tells you why their air soles are better than Reebok's. "They honor great athletes. And they honor great athletics. That's who they are." He compares it to the dairy industry spending 20 years trying to convince people milk was good for them, failing, and then running "Got Milk," which doesn't even mention the product. Focuses on its absence.

He says Apple spends a fortune on advertising. "You'd never know it."

Then he fires the ad agency. Not just fires them. Apple was running a competition with 23 agencies. He scrapped the whole thing and hired Chiat/Day, the agency he'd worked with a decade earlier on the 1984 Macintosh commercial that advertising professionals voted the best ad ever made.

The question they asked themselves: "Our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for?"

His answer: "Apple at its core, its core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. And that those people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do."

Then he plays the ad. In this room. To Apple employees. For the first time.

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers."

He says almost none of these people had ever appeared in an advertisement before. He personally obtained Yoko Ono's permission to use John Lennon. He says the estates and living subjects agreed because of their feelings toward Apple. "I don't think there is another company on Earth that could have done this campaign."

The ad broke that Sunday during the network premiere of Toy Story on ABC. Two 60-second spots. Newspaper ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today. Billboards in major cities. Buses in five cities featuring Rosa Parks. Painted walls. The whole thing.

Apple's stock was around $0.10 split-adjusted when this meeting happened. The company is worth $3.68 trillion today. Think Different ran for five years. Every product that came after, the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, was built on the identity this campaign established by a guy who'd been back at the company for eight weeks and finished the ad at three in the morning.

Video: Steve Jobs internal staff meeting at Apple, September 1997. This is the first time the Think Different campaign has been shown to employees. Jobs had been back at Apple for eight weeks. Footage leaked from an internal recording.

[Nancy King @nanking]

Finally a post about AI that balances the power of these tools with the disconnect users (including me) often feel. @ngavini

[Naveen Gavini @ngavini]

https://t.co/hg4DFoc1Jj

[Nancy King @nanking]

The most ambitious projects initially seem crazy. The ones that succeed hit an inflection point where the idea begins to feel inevitable. This feels like one of those moments.

[Jan Sramek 🇺🇲 🌁 ⛰️ @jansramek]

1/ America cannot compete with China without building America's Shenzen – a place to build drones, ships, robots, and everything else cutting edge.

Where? On @CAForever's 100 square miles in Solano, 60 miles north of SF/Silicon Valley, where we invent that stuff. Here's why. 🧵

[Nancy King @nanking]

@LizCrokin Katz

[Brian Chesky @bchesky]

Meet Airbnb Rooms — an all-new take on the original Airbnb

[Brian Chesky @bchesky]

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

[Nancy King @nanking]

I had Hyperemesis gravidarum with both of my pregnancies and can attest, it's 40 weeks of pure hell. Thank you Dr. Fajzo for your important work

Her Doctor Said Her Illness Was All in Her Head. This Scientist Was Determined to Find the Truth. https://t.co/FF2HwoQPNF

[Nancy King @nanking]

@grid_events Power is out at my house on mill creek lane

[Nancy King @nanking]

@cnnbrk I’m starting to feel better about the world.

[Nancy King @nanking]

The irony of posting this on social media is not lost on me but still a good read.
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic https://t.co/KItrVmIE1Z

[Nancy King @nanking]

Ukraine Airbnbs being booked in effort to get money to residents https://t.co/FulofOfth6

[Nancy King @nanking]

@Mildenhall it seems your Airbnb legacy is living on thanks to M&M's. 🤣

[M&M’S @mmschocolate]

We’re on a mission to create a world where everyone feels they belong using the power of fun! Join us in being for all funkind. #ForAllFunkind Check out https://t.co/Mq7wG9sX8v for more!

[Esther Dyson @edyson]

It is so much easier to undermine than to build... That asymmetry will not go away. But it is possible to overcome it, sometimes.

[Nancy King @nanking]

@WatersMelissa @Upwork Congrats!!

[Nancy King @nanking]

RIP Joan Didion. Your legacy will live on in the hearts of all of us who loved and admired your words.
Joan Didion, who chronicled American decadence and hypocrisy, dies at 87 - The Washington Post https://t.co/uDcmG0iEl5

[Nancy King @nanking]

I understand the logic… but ugh. https://t.co/bq8FML795P

[Nancy King @nanking]

Good Parents Capitalize on Their Individual Strengths. My Wife’s Is Seeing to Our Kids’ Every Need, and Mine Is Roughhousing - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency https://t.co/F3yOcI0BzV