ABOUT

Amplify help Airbnb show their CEO how to explore London differently, with the help of Emeli Sandé.

Challenge

Airbnb is known for its innovation in the travel category, and their next business step focused on making the discovery element of their industry easier to access. Airbnb wanted to engage their key millennial segment and early adopters with ‘Trips’, as well as creating buzz around their new product.

Insight

Airbnb users are open to new experiences, but many aren’t aware of the Trips feature, or the custom guidebooks that the Airbnb community curates. Airbnb wanted the new features to inspire, not avert, their millennial audience.

Strategy

Showcase Trips as a credible, accessible option to the already established Airbnb consumer. Present Airbnb as a one-stop-shop for travel needs by giving access to meaningful places and cultures travellers might otherwise not discover.

Solution

We coincided the start of our campaign with the arrival of Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb, in London and the launch of Trips in the UK.

We created a high profile experience for him that would showcase the guidebooks feature to a new, tangible level. By partnering with London-based artist and songwriter Emeli Sandé, we helped create her own personal London guidebook (that would also be featured in the Airbnb app). It was filled with detailed insights into her favourite spots in east London, as well as highlighting the places she drew musical inspiration from.

That wasn’t all though. We brought her guidebook to life by creating an experience for Sandé and Chesky to share together. Leading the way, they through east London (via black cab, of course), swapping anecdotes and meeting local Trip hosts along the way. To boost awareness of the campaign, we partnered with Stylist and Shortlist to cover the Trip with an advertorial feature across print and online.

KPIs

A rich, intriguing, unusual tour of London through a musical lens with an influencer that held themselves well and who could engage with Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky.

Brian should be able to discover elements of London that he never knew before through the expertise of London local + influencer, Emeli Sandé.

Create a lasting piece of legacy content organically from the tour that can be pushed out through a media partnership with Stylist and Shortlist, the UK’s most widely distributed free magazines. This should create buzz and awareness around the launch of the guidebook and Trips in the UK. It also gives Emeli Sandé’s fanbase an exclusive piece of content that gives a real insight into her world, and more opportunities to share the content further.