Insight
Everyone has holiday dreams. Staying in Paris and in a two floor flat in the 16th arrondissement, honeymooning in a bungalow house in Bora Bora, discovering Japanese culture while staying at a Tokyo dojo house. People spend hours browsing pictures online imagining the extraordinary experiences they would have there. And increasingly they share those experiences and dreams with others through social media; visually engaging content being one of the most valuable social currencies. But they’re just fantasies, aren’t they?
This is where Airbnb comes in. It wants to change the way people travel, and allow them to experience amazing places through the eyes and homes of locals. The brand truly believes in a world where you can belong anywhere.
Strategy
It gave people access to previously exclusive spaces and places, taking the concept of bed and breakfast and giving it a makeover. Working with global celebrities, iconic locations and premium partners it created incredible, fantasy-like properties that were visually stunning and that people would love to stay at, talk about and share images of. Each property was tailored to a specific market and audience.
Lucky guests could spend a “#NightAt” the place of their dreams. Football fans went to Andre Iniesta’s vineyard in Spain, shared an evening with him discussing the future of football with a glass of wine from his nearby vineyard. Fashion Addicts slept in the 100 year old Galleries Lafayette in Paris after enjoying a personal shopping experience while the store was closed to the public. Ski & snowboard fanatics had goose bumps while staying in a cable car 9,000ft above the ground in the French Alps; and then they had the slopes for themselves for a morning.
But as importantly as these being amazing locations to stay in, these experiences created conversation about Airbnb. Potential guests talked about the amazing destinations that Airbnb has created while existing users had permission to talk about their own Airbnb experiences. The agency captured those conversations and fuelled them with media, ensuring that millions of new people found out about Airbnb.
Execution
Although each ‘#Night at’ was unique SMG created and refined a globally consistent approach to activating these experiences. This allowed it to evolve and scale this approach across new markets.
The agency focused on delivering the content to four core audience groups via paid social media and PR outreach:
- Airbnb Fans: It knew that they would be the first to proudly talk about brand actions; so used them as ambassadors on Facebook and Twitter.
- Sharers: SMG identified groups and industries that were the most likely groups to share content on social platforms, and targeted them with paid ads on Facebook and Twitter.
- Influencers: Depending on the nature of the #NightAt competition (eg. Fashion, sport), the agency worked with bloggers as well as first and second tier celebrities who were relevant to each field to create credible, visually driven advertorials in their own digital properties.
- Aficionados: Those were everyday people who were passionate about the nature of the #NightAt (e.g. Plane enthusiasts for #NightAT KLM Plane). These were targeted with social media ads if not exposed to influencers or fans content already.
SMG super charged its targeting through 3rd party data from Axciom and used Twitter and Facebook to pin-point very precisely a pre-disposed, socially connected audience. It used Airbnb social pages data to identify lookalikes in the broader data pool; then over-laid interest data relevant to each #NighAt and finally ensured the audience were heavily active socially. This enabled SMG s to build unique custom pools for each competition. For example for #NightAt Galleries Lafayette, it targeted Fashion Addicts who are willing to travel to shop, in France, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The agency targeted its small budget on these core groups in order to generate disproportionate free organic reach and create far greater share of voice from the budget.
Results
To date, the ‘#NightAt’ campaigns have earned over $3m in equivalent media value, 10x times more than the paid media budget, through a total of over 1,000 print and online articles across 33 countries.
Of the 50MM paid impressions, 625,000 people spent time discovering Airbnb. Of those, 540,000 visited exclusive content about the #NightAt properties and 90,000 either shared, commented or positively interacted with this content. 25,000 were engaged enough to write why they’d want to spend a #NightAt one of the Airbnb locations, with 25 lucky winners seeing their dream of staying at these properties come true.
The campaign also had an impact beyond just driving conversation. Over 8,000 new people signed up as Airbnb guests and the #NightAt Floating House in London has created so much interest, it was the third highest booking peak ever in the UK.
Brands and designers are proactively approaching Airbnb to get involved and create the next ‘#NightAt’. Look out for the #NightAt the Conan O’Brian TV Show and the #NightAt the Maracana Stadium in Brazil.