The Customer Wall
Make the entire customer journey visible and discuss it in customer language
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
The Customer Wall turns a complex product and campaign into a shared physical representation of what the audience will actually encounter. Teams print product surfaces, marketing, communications, influencer activity, and timelines, then arrange them so everyone can inspect the same journey. Discussion must use customer words instead of internal acronyms or specialist language. This prevents each function from carrying a slightly different mental picture and reveals inconsistencies that screens, decks, and abstract status reports conceal. During reviews, the team repeatedly asks whether anyone outside the company will notice, understand, have time for, or care about a detail. The wall therefore serves as a communication device, an experience audit, and a decision filter grounded in observable customer reality.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain, where Hiroki Asai described Airbnb's old-school practice of printing its product and marketing work on walls.
Core principles
- 01People need the same visible picture before they can make aligned decisions
- 02Customers do not understand or care about internal organizational language
- 03Small differences in mental models compound as work progresses
- 04Physical artifacts help teams get out of their own heads
How to run it
- 1
Collect the surfaces
Gather every customer-facing product screen, message, campaign asset, communication, and relevant timeline. Include work from every participating function.
Pro tip Capture transitional states, not only polished final screens.
Watch out A wall containing only marketing assets will not represent the complete journey.
- 2
Print and arrange
Print the materials and arrange them in the order a customer is likely to encounter them. Make relationships and timing visible at a glance.
Pro tip Leave space for annotations, alternatives, and missing touchpoints.
Watch out Do not organize the wall by internal department if the customer experiences a different sequence.
- 3
Adopt customer language
Label and discuss the work using words the audience would recognize. Translate or remove acronyms, internal categories, and functional jargon.
Pro tip Use wording captured directly from customer research where possible.
Watch out Familiar internal language can disguise concepts customers will not understand.
- 4
Walk the journey
Move through the wall as a customer would and assess continuity, comprehension, friction, and relevance. Invite each function to review the complete experience.
Pro tip Assign someone to narrate the journey without explaining hidden internal context.
Watch out If the experience only makes sense after an employee explains it, the work is not yet clear.
- 5
Run the reality questions
Ask whether customers will see the detail, understand it, have time to process it, and care about it. Revise the work whenever those answers are weak.
Pro tip Record decisions directly beside the artifact that triggered them.
Watch out Do not let seniority or functional preference replace the customer's perspective.
In the wild
Airbnb prints product surfaces, marketing, communications work, influencer plans, and timelines on walls. Leaders use the display to discuss one visible representation of what the customer sees.
→ The shared picture keeps functions aligned and catches small interpretation differences before they compound.
Common mistakes
Reviewing through separate screens
People can sit together while holding slightly different pictures in their heads. Create one persistent visual reference that everyone can point to.
Speaking in internal dialects
Acronyms and specialist language isolate functions and obscure customer comprehension. Translate the work into customer words.
Displaying only final polish
A curated wall can conceal gaps, transitions, and operational details. Show the journey as it actually exists.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for cross-functional teams reviewing complex products or campaigns with many connected touchpoints.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when confidential materials cannot be displayed in a properly controlled physical workspace.
From the transcript
“what we do is we print out everything on the walls.”
“And so we create this representation of what the customer sees, and we always talk to that so we don't start residing in our own…”
“It's just having the same picture for everyone to speak to, to get out of our own heads.”
From the episode
The $86B Marketing Playbook Behind Airbnb w/ Global CMO Hiroki Asai
Hiroki Asai