The Brief

This campaign was created in order to convert travelers who knew of Airbnb, to members of the Airbnb community. In order to achieve this, tailored language versions were created for each market, and real-life members of the community were included in the production of the film. Our click-through rates were 62% and 338% higher than industry benchmarks in desktop and mobile respectively, with nearly 1 million new visitors directly gained from online film views.

Creative Execution

The world around you feels smaller when you travel. When you're part of the Airbnb community that feeling grows even stronger. So to tell the story of Airbnb and educate people on how to use Airbnb.com, we created a small world of our own. Over five weeks, 30 model-makers and artists built an 852 sq. ft. landscape with 60 handmade houses inspired by real listings. We also included 96 figurines – including six miniatures of real Airbnb guests. The camera was mounted on a model train and everything was shot in-camera, no computer-generated imagery was used. Most importantly, by replacing in-camera projections with Asian language translations we reached viewers in China, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, our most important educational targets. Right from the beginning, the film was intended only for digital channels; thus,the only assets created were the 60-second main film and a 2-minute ‘Behind the Scenes’.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Our target audience was young, urban travelers living in five major Asian markets: China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong. They seek value, which is beyond price as well as authentic, local experiences (versus checking off countries and landmarks) and pride themselves in discovering that hidden izakaya that does not show up on the likes of Tripadvisor.com. The campaign was intended to bridge the comprehension gap that existed with Airbnb as a platform; we had a high level of brand awareness, but understanding of how Airbnb.com could be used, and actual usage of the service was low.

Results

Travellers everywhere embraced the film, with over 28,143,336 million views globally, with APAC contributing 21,672,328 of those views and counting. With an engagement rate of 4,79%, far exceeding industry benchmarks, and a clickthrough rate of 2,75% on desktop (62% higher than industry benchmarks) and 2,27%% on mobile (338% higher than industry benchmarks) this ended up driving over 960,935 potential buyers to our website. A 31% lower CPV (Cost Per View) than benchmarks also gave us savings of $137,000 in media investment and helped us reach No. 1 in Google's organic search. Not only did it win Adweek's Ad of the Day, but the Airbnb film was also widely featured in The Guardian, Hypebeast, USAToday, Fast Company, Creativity Online, and numerous other publications and blogs. The result was earned PR worth over $1,200,000 and counting this also helped us further educate our audience on how to book accommodation through Airbnb.com.