#WeAccept - Acceptance starts with all of us

Unafraid to elevate its internal battle against prejudice to the public level, Airbnb transformed their own Community Commitment into a global campaign called #WeAccept to drive the conversation against discrimination and inspire real action.

We ran a :30s #WeAccept ad between the 1st and 2nd quarters of Super Bowl LI.

We leveraged paid media across Facebook, Youtube & Twitter to boost messaging. To further demonstrate that “Acceptance stars with all of us,” we published the portraits featured in the ad alongside their firsthand testimonial of “acceptance” across Airbnb-owned social channels FB, Twitter & Instagram.

We took over the front page of Airbnb.com and created Airbnb.com/weaccept, on which we featured the letter, signed by Airbnb’s founders, that was mailed to all Airbnb community members. It announced Airbnb’s pledge to provide housing relief to 100k people in need over the next 5 years, and $4M to the IRC over the next 4 years.

This served as a catalyst for donations to the IRC and a new platform for the community to list their homes as safe havens for refugees and survivors of natural disasters.

Airbnb generated over 33k tweets during the first half of the game, more than any other advertiser, with overwhelmingly positive sentiment.

The #WeAccept campaign generated a total of 87 million earned impressions on social media.

At commercial air time there was a 2x increase in traffic to airbnb.com. Normally in the 10k requests per second range, we spiked to 20k per second.

After the Super Bowl spot aired we saw an immediate lift of 17 volunteer host sign-ups that quickly moved to 600 by end of game. Overnight the number of volunteers jumped to over 4,600 sign-ups.

The latest results indicate 15,400 total volunteer host signups; 226 people accommodated across 6 countries in 27 cities (39 families, 90 children); $145k and counting raised to date, matched by Airbnb and donated to the IRC, International Refugee Assistance Project, National Immigration Law Center.

Airbnb, a community marketplace for people to access unique homes, experiences, and places around the world, introduced #WeAccept at the Super Bowl — the United States’ most-viewed annual sporting event and just one week after the announcement of a travel ban to the U.S. NFL Super Bowl LI was seen on average by 113.7 million viewers and a total audience of 172 million making it the fifth most-watched program in TV history. As the first Super Bowl commercial in the brand’s history, never before has Airbnb delivered a direct message to such a large audience.

We leveraged elements of the film that Airbnb published only a few months prior to fight discrimination within its own community, called “The Community Commitment.” The film’s impactful, deeply personal imagery would serve to inspire action long after its initial release during the Super Bowl. At the end of the film, we introduced the hashtag #WeAccept to unite the global conversation against the travel ban and in favor of refugees in-need.

After airing the Super Bowl ad, we wanted as many people to see the spot as possible, so targeting was relatively broad across other paid media.

We shared the video, original photography and short testimonials across Airbnb’s owned social channels where the heavily millennial audience reacts most positively to short-form stories.

In November 2016, Airbnb publicly acknowledged widespread discrimination on its platform, and demanded its elimination with the “Community Commitment” — an initiative that attracted widespread positive (and negative) feedback. It required Airbnb users to agree to “treat everyone in the Airbnb community—regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age—with respect, and without judgment or bias” or else be removed from the platform. Motivated by the announcement of the US travel ban on seven muslim-majority nations Airbnb aspired to shared its message of non-negotiable acceptance on the largest national stage: the Super Bowl in February 2017. Beyond spurring a conversation, Airbnb wanted to turn its message into an actionable opportunity for real people to contribute to the fight against discrimination around the world by supporting Airbnb’s larger refugee relief initiative.