Brand Experience and Activation > Sectors
AIRBNB, San Francisco / AIRBNB / 2017
Overview
Credits
CampaignDescription
On the night of Halloween, two winners re-lived the story of Jonathan Harker, as they journeyed through Transylvania during the night and finally approached a mysterious castle on the top of a mountain.
They explored the castle and its dark corridors, creepy nooks and squeaky staircases. The host, Dacre Stoker, the great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker, accompanied them on their quest to solve Dracula’s mysteries and explained his legend and connection to Vlad the Impaler. The guests felt asleep in luxurious velvet-trimmed coffins in complete silence, with only the sound of wolves roaming outside the castle.
The combination of mythic spooky castle, bloodthirsty legend, and an iconic literary classic resulted in unprecedented media interest and an extraordinary response from the public.
Execution
The exclusive with Associated Press announcing the ‘Night at’ syndicated in +200 outlets worldwide. Dacre Stoker's quote on the press release became AP’s top rated quotes of the day, next to a Trump-related quote.
The strength of the story around Halloween resulted in three global newswires and a TV network (AP; Reuters; AFP; CBS) covering the winners experience extensively. Selected target media from priority markets and major newspapers and consumer publications featured the story throughout the day resulting in extensive TV coverage (NBC; ABC; France 2; Antena3; CZTV) and +2000 press hits.
Opinion-leading online channels developed share-worthy creatives from the official media footage allowing for Mashable earning +100,000 shares on Facebook. Augmenting the hype, social drove conversations through Instagramer @Moners exploring Transylvania, and the FB live drone flight simulating a bat flying around the castle (+30,000 lifetime views) broadcasting the ‘Night at’ experience perfectly timed for the American prime time.
Outcome
Press hits: Actual 2,008 / +5x Benchmark
Competition entries: Actual 88,000
Signups: Actual 49,000 / +2.45x Benchmark
Earned impressions: Actual: +27MM / 1.8x Benchmark
Likes: Actual 749,000 likes / +1.22x Benchmark
Shares: Actual 42,000 shares / +1.48x Benchmark
Relevancy
Airbnb constantly looks for ways to show how traveling with Airbnb is different. When you travel with Airbnb, you're not just going somewhere — you actually live there. Airbnb’s global ‘Night at’ campaigns identify awe inspiring, iconic and unusual places, and in the form of a contest, Airbnb invites the public to enter to win a spend the night in a once in a lifetime location. Night At Dracula's Castle was one of Airbnb's most thrilling and successful Night At experiences to date.
Strategy
The communications strategy aimed on reaching a global target audience from 18-65+ emphasising on Millennials (25-34) We began with a press activation — an exclusive for the global newswire Associated Press, as well as social amplification (FB; IG) through a wide spread of inspiring content assets such as fun and entertaining insider facts on vampires and an Instagram influencer story exploring Transylvania.
Upon launch of the Night At, we pushed further press activation through exclusive on-event content production with four TV crews, used owned media team for content publishing, and hosted 15 journalists for live coverage. Our social amplification covered 21 countries with a FB live drone flight production imitating a bat flying over the castle on dawn as social highlight.
Synopsis
Count Dracula lived in a castle located high above a valley perched on a rock with a flowing river below in the Principality of Transylvania. Commonly known as 'Dracula's Castle', Bran Castle, located in the Carpathian mountains, is the castle referred to in Bram Stoker's novel.
As the title character of the Gothic horror novel, since 1897 he has spawned an extraordinary vampire subculture with the legend of Transylvania at its center. Today Dracula is one of the most famous characters in popular culture and the second most portrayed character of all time.
To celebrate Halloween, one of the most famous celebration days in the world, Airbnb arranged for Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s great grandnephew to host two guests at Dracula’s castle.
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