To teach the world how they can re-think travel, Airbnb looked directly to its community for inspiration and tailored its largest-ever product launch to highlight the hundreds of individual hosts leading the experiences now available with Airbnb. Inspired by movie trailers and posters, we created a unique brand identity, a poster, and a 30-second trailer for each of the 360 Immersion Experience Hosts included in the November 2016 Trips launch. We then leveraged these assets for maximum media, social, and platform exposure. Thinking mobile-first, we designed the Airbnb app to bring together where you stay, what you do and the people you meet all in one place to make travel both easy and magical.

The launch took place across the globe starting 11/17, after the U.S. Presidential election and before the Thanksgiving/Black Friday & holiday madness. Brian Chesky, Founder and CEO, launched the Trips platform at Airbnb’s annual hosting festival Open in Los Angeles, where it was broadcasted on Facebook Live. Immediately after his keynote, we had the Trips host community from six different feeds take over Airbnb’s Facebook Live for 24 hours. To scale to a broader audience outside of Airbnb’s existing fans, we promoted and simulcasted the live Trips feed from top travel publishers’ Facebook profiles, including Conde Nast Traveler. We also distributed our pre-recorded Trips video trailers across influential news outlets, through native seeding and on Millennials’ top sites and social networks, including Snapchat Discover, alongside our Trips ad campaign. On Twitter, we made 1:1 connections with followers by sharing Experiences based on their dream emoji itineraries.

We were highly successful at generating buzz to launch the new platform into the new year. In just two weeks, our launch set a new record for Airbnb’s marketing benchmarks. We earned over 79 million impressions from over 130 million total impressions, doubling Airbnb’s previous earned media record. We garnered 38 million video views, which set a new high for the brand in a 2-week timeframe. Plus, we generated nearly 31 thousand video shares and PR coverage about the launch of Trips totaled 2,710 media hits. Overall, this led to 1.3 million Trips-related searches (demonstrating interest), 955 thousand visits to the new Trips page on Airbnb’s site within the 2 week flight, and a 6% increase in Trips’ top-of-mind awareness among Millennials.

Airbnb needed to launch a campaign that would build the most buzz — focusing on likes, shares, and earned impressions as well as media hits. We took a fully integrated media approach that would not only invite audiences to discover a better way of traveling, and ultimately living, but also to elevate Trips via the Airbnb App and drive credibility for the brand. To do this, we created a tactical approach by dividing our efforts across 3 types of cities - Launch (Los Angeles), Marquee Cities (where the Trips product would be streamed over Facebook Live) & Key Influencer Cities whose buy-in is critical for any culture-shifting reveal. While targeting was global, our branding and messaging for the launch was geared towards Airbnb’s flagship segment of head-first explorers.

Since 2008 Airbnb has transformed where people stay when they travel through people-powered hospitality. With the launch of Airbnb’s Trips platform, Airbnb evolved from homes to end-to-end travel, and took the same people-focused approach to the rest of the trip. As part of Trips, Airbnb launched with 500 Experiences in 12 cities worldwide. These locally-hosted Experiences enable travellers to truly experience a destination’s culture through activities, access to hotspots and experts, and full-city guidebooks. Airbnb Experiences redefine how the world travels, providing a continuous way to live like an insider. To drive buzz around this launch and reach to reach targets across culture, travel, national, international and tech & design segments , we needed an integrated marketing campaign that would show travelers how they can live a more connected & immersive travel experience in a way that’s both easy and magical.