Hello Stranger
Hello Stranger started as an insight: “Over 45% of all interactions on the Airbnb platform occur between people who don’t share the same language.” From there an idea was born: to bring the immersive sound of travel to life through transformative storytelling.
“Hello Stranger is a podcast that takes you to places you don’t expect.”
As Creative Director on an un-resourced project, I was responsible for every aspect of this project—including recruiting a tiny team of ambitious creatives and producers who were willing to take on a secretive and unauthorized project. We crafted the strategy, which allowed us to position the concept in a very unique way. We also built a multi-season episodic guide, and included key benchmarks that helped illustrate exactly how we wanted the podcast to sound. I met with some of the most respected people in the audio world to gather learnings, and attended two key conferences to develop a network and stronger understanding of the medium.
After an extensive internal roadshow, and dozens of presentations, the project was finally resourced and funded for three pilot prototype episodes that sent us to Italy, Japan, and Northern California.
Episode 1: Italy (Can’t share due to rights concern.)
I traveled with a partner to Palombara Sabina outside of Rome, Italy to capture the story and ambient sounds of this ancient village. We positioned this as our hero story.
Given our tight timeless and limited budget, we wanted to capture a story that was very close to the Airbnb brand.
We sent one of our writers alongside a partner to a small rural village hours outside of Tokyo to capture a story that we’d previously covered in an issue of Airbnb Magazine.
Team: Yara Khakbaz, Harrison Watkins, Aaron Davidoff, Dillon Petrillo, Marguerite Carter, Brendan Francis Newnam (partner), SoundMadePublic (partner)