A bedroom is a person’s most personal place. Entering someone’s bedroom provides a voyeuristic experience, placing you in their physical, emotional and mental space.

So, to connect people with Van Gogh we gave them the ability to enter his bedroom. Now for the first time, instead of just looking at a painting, people could live inside one.

To help people immerse themselves into the life and art of Van Gogh, we brought his 1888 Bedroom painting to life. Then, through a first-of-its kind partnership with AirBnb, we invited people to book a night inside it. AirBnb became a promotion tool as it became a way for everyone around the world to interact with the exhibit, trying to book a night in the bedroom.

The campaign started with a single social media post from the museum, announcing that the first block of nights would become available the next day. The reaction was immediate and the post was shared around the world.

AirBnb also featured the room prominently on their blog, pushing it out to their followers. Blogs, newspapers and TV stations picked up the story and amplified it. The amplification continued exponentially around the world, bringing word of the room and the exhibit to a huge audience.

Because of demand, guests were limited to one night stays. Rooms were made available three or four weeks at a time, with each of these blocks selling out within minutes.

Online pre-sale tickets for the exhibit were up 250%.

On average 4700 people visited every day over the first six weeks. Total attendance during this time was more than 200,000–beating business targets by 73%.

“Van Gogh Bedrooms” was the Art Institute of Chicago’s highest-attended exhibit in 15 years.

The room cost $31k to build, and generated over $6M in earned media.

By leveraging AirBnb, we amplified our paid media reach by 950%, scaling it globally.

Van Gogh BnB has been covered in more than 100 countries, gaining 623 million earned media impressions.

Van Gogh BnB was a limited-time promotion that got people to participate with, and attend, the Art Institute of Chicago’s temporary exhibit: “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms.”

We created a promotion that people could not only take part in–they could live in it. And as it turned out, we didn’t have to ask people to participate; they we’re fighting for a chance to. In the end, thousands of people interacted with the Art Institute before even attending the exhibit, leading to record-breaking attendance.

The target audience was people living in and around Chicago. We knew art-enthusiasts would already be interested, so we aimed to communicate with the wider public. Many of these people are familiar with Van Gogh’s painting and the tabloid-esque stories of his life, so we wanted to demonstrate that this was a view of Van Gogh they had never seen before.

A painting can only get you so close to an artist. And the stories of Van Gogh’s exploits only reveal so much about the man. So we thought the best way for people to connect to Van Gogh’s life and art was to invite them to spend a night inside this room.

The Art Institute of Chicago was introducing a new Van Gogh exhibit. It wasn’t a wide retrospective, and it didn’t contain many of Van Gogh’s most famous works. Instead it was a sharply focused show, concentrating on the artist’s two years in Arles France.

The show brought Van Gogh’s three “Bedroom” paintings together for the first time in North America. It was a big deal to art-enthusiasts, but meant less to the general public.

The intent of the show and the brief was the same: bring people closer to the artist, not just as a painter, but as a person. The objective was to create interest and attendance for this very focused exhibit.