Big Idea: Spend Halloween in “the world’s largest grave.”

For the most terrifying night of the year, the Catacombs of Paris and Airbnb hosted a contest to give somebody a chance to be the very first live person to sleep amongst the dead.

Airbnb’s mission: help people “belong anywhere.” But this promotion was special as no one had ever been granted permission to spend the night in the Catacombs.

It wasn’t just a “night in an extraordinary” place, it was an idea designed to capture the attention of the press and public and generate significant earned media attention. That in turn would drive entries and new sign-ups.

Why the Catacombs?

* Create global conversation with a great PR hook; raise awareness

* Demonstrate access to the most interesting places in the world

* Prove that anyone can truly belong anywhere

Press release, PR outreach, and social posts about the contest, all launched in early October, promoting the two-week entry window.

Media attention around the program took an unexpected turn and the story got “hotter” than we anticipated (see results below) but rode the wave of interest in the story to generate increased global coverage.

20,419 entries later, Pedro, from Brazil, was our lucky winner. During the night of October 31, he got to spend the night in the depths of Paris, alongside the centuries-old remains.

After a private tour of the labyrinth of bones and skulls, the guests will enjoy a daunting culinary experience to the sound of violins. At bedtime, a storyteller read some catacombs legends to make sure Pedro didn’t experience any sweet dreams. The next morning, he became the first person to ever wake up in the Paris Catacombs.

20,419 entries

17,814 new sign-ups

284,562 unique page views of the contest entry page

517 Key media hits (TV, radio, print, online)

14.8 million earned Twitter impressions

At the launch of the contest, there was great buzz from the quirky news press (HuffPo, GQ, etc.) but then the story got politicized and there was a mini-scandal about the city allowing Airbnb to host guests in the Catacombs. (Figaro, Parisien, Le Point, The Times, etc.)

From there, the story got global attention and “What’s happening in France?” stories were filed by many mainstream outlets (Time, Today Show, Newsweek, CNN, etc.). And then, during the visit itself on Halloween, there was additional coverage around the “Atypical Halloween” angle. (AP, Reuters, etc.)

The "Night At" promotion is very much about activating new users of Airbnb.com. The contest generated more than 20,000 entires in just three weeks and 87% of them were new sign-ups to Airbnb.

The key strategy was finding a “wow” location that would capture the public’s imagination and then use PR to amplify the story. There was very little paid media associated with the campaign (promoted social), so we had to use PR effectively to generate earned media.

Customer Target audience:

* Potential new users (attract them to the site)

* Existing community (engage and reward)

PR and Social Target audiences:

* Journalists

* Online media in priority (to link to the listing): news sites, “buzz” media, online lifestyles

* Radio and TV shows

* National daily publications and free newspapers

* Airbnb fans and their friends

Amplification strategy:

* Press release, reporter outreach/pitching

* Social campaign (including $36K paid social)

* Partnering with established and trusted institutions

* Emailing and engagement with the community

* Pre- and post-visit video shared on social channels (and offered to media outlets for story visuals)

Airbnb is a community marketplace for people to list, discover and unique accommodations around the world. In the last eight years, more than 80 million people have done just that.

We were inspired by members listing incredible places (a plane in Costa Rica, a private island in Fiji, a giraffe manor, etc.) and decided that WE wanted give back and provide unprecedented access to extraordinary stays.

So we created a franchise named “Night at.” The idea is to create a global conversation with local stories through listings such as the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, a KLM plane in Amsterdam and even the Paris Catacombs.

In Europe, in particular, Airbnb has low scores compared to our competitors (vacation rentals/shared accommodation sites.) But once people are aware of our offering, we have strong conversation rates from awareness to usage to loyalty.

Our key objective: increase brand awareness and drive signups