Ideas We Love: AirBNB's new 'Icons' Platform 🎈🏠🔑
Issue Number 18: AirBNBs long running 'Night at' series morphs into new 'Icons' platform launching with eleven one-time-only, one-of-a-kind stays
Hello there!
As spring turns to summer many people’s thoughts start to switch into holiday-mode, or at least getting one booked-in; which makes this week’s issue of Ideas We Love 💕 a timely one.
As it’s an issue we’ve dedicated to a long-running idea, that’s morphed from tactical stunts into a permanent play by AirBNB to offer unique stays, with some star power to help them stand-out and stand apart from the competition.
The initial idea that hooked us in: A night at….the ‘Up’ House 🎈🏡🔑
If you were on AdTwitter or LinkedIN last week, it’s highly likely you’d have, like us, stumbled across this lovely little idea.
A collaboration between AirBNB & Disney to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the film Up; bringing the magic of Carl and Ellie’s house to the real world; complete with 8,000 balloons (and a crane) that drifts guests up, up and away to high above the New-Mexican plains where AirBNBs latest stay is listed.
Like many of their famous recreations, the house fully captures the whimsical charm of the movie, packed with loads of Easter eggs from the film.
Stepping inside the house, visitors are invited to take part in a range of activities; from simple pleasures like sorting Carl’s mail to more adventurous pursuits like wilderness excursions and stargazing under the night sky.
The detail they’ve gone to is remarkable.
Look at the tennis-balls on the bottom of the walking-stick, the beaten-up sofa with the dip in the middle, the Green Book of BIRDS of America or Carl’s prescription drugs bottles as just a few examples.
Oooft. Lovely.
Why we love this idea ❤️
We’ve always been big fans of the Night at series, but this particular launch comes as just one element of a much more significant play by the brand to get closer to different fans and fandoms in a more systematic way.
#1 Stunts → ‘Icons’
AirBNB have elevated the Night at series from here today, gone tomorrow headline grabbers, to a new category of stay that co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky launched on May 1st alongside the Up House that they’ve labelled… Icons.
So what’s Icons all about?
“Icons take you inside worlds that only existed in your imagination—until now. As life becomes increasingly digital, we’re focused on bringing more magic into the real world. With Icons, we’ve created the most extraordinary experiences on Earth.” Brian Chesky
Icons are new category of stay, launched with 11 truly unique experiences.
Whether you fancy stepping into the X-Mansion in Westchester, waking up in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, playing some games with Khaby Lame, partying in Prince’s Palace or hanging out with the likes of Kevin Hart or Doja Cat - they’re all now bookable (well you enter a Wonka style booking lottery) on AirBNB.
A smorgasboard of stays and plays that cater to and get the brand closer to a richer diversity of interests and passion points and with it journalists and influencers…
#2 It’s a long idea, refreshed in new and novel ways 🤯🔥
In James Hurman & Peter Field’s Creative Effectiveness Ladder, they evidenced that the brands that create the most cultural and commercial impact from creativity (Enduring Icons) do so by committing to insightful ideas, for the long-term, at scale and with conviction.
Download the free research out-takes here.
Enduring Icons find new and novel ways to refresh what people know about them.
Doing things people come to expect from the brand, but delivered in unexpected ways that get people talking; AirBNBs Night at platform that’s now morphed into Icons is a great example of this.
A bonfire of an idea, that with each stay offered up from Shrek’s Swamp to Barbie’s Dreamhouse adds another twig to the fire that creates more energy, heat and magnetism that draws more people towards what they’re up to.
And whilst only a lucky few will ever get the chance to stay in the Shrek’s Swamp or Barbie’s DreamHouse; it reminds many more of the cabins and beach houses that are only really readily available through AirBNB.
#3 It’s a magnetic idea, that pulls on other brand’s budgets 🧲💰
Not only does this idea draw punters in, it draws other brands and collaborators in too. Keen to juice some of that sweet, sweet attention for themselves.
One act, one press release, global coverage immediately triggered.
This platform is so potent at creating headlines AirBNB are in the rare but extremely advantageous club, akin to the likes of Palace & Supreme, of accessing the A&P budgets, agencies and talent of other brands and A-Listers who want to work with them.
Thus expanding their media plans further and faster than their budgets may otherwise allow.
#4 It creates buzz off platform and traffic on-platform 📱
One of AirBNBs marketing leaders was interviewed saying nearly 5 million people have landed on the Icons pages and what preceded them in recent times; that’s 5 million people AirBNB can add to their first-party data pools and bring through the funnel with whichever form of performance marketing they see as effective.
This idea doesn’t just create buzz off-platform, it creates traffic on-platform too.
Filling up those first-party data pipes.
What we’d love to have done with it
The point of this section is to suggest things we’d like to do free from the shackles of budgets, legals and approvals.
Given there were 11 ideas alongside the big idea of Icons we’ve narrowed our thoughts to the initial element that caught our eye - the Up house.
#1 Make a bigger dent in “Disney-World” ✉️
To create more frequent and varied spikes of attention and conversation, you might seek to create other moments in the news cycle beyond the PR-release of key visuals.
For the Up house, given it’s so hard to distinguish between Pixar vs. real-life with this home, you could feasibly utilise the talent from the film in VO to make what appears to be a trailer for “Up 2” where the characters, POV style are taking pics of their home.
However instead of coming in theatres being the call-to-action, you reveal shortly listing on AirBNB instead; seeded through owned channels, selective buys in cinema, on Pixar related content on YouTube and with Disney creators across the socials to make an even bigger dent in ‘Disney world’ to compliment the PR release.
An approach that could easily be ported into other fans and fandoms that the ten other stays made available on the all-new Icons tab are looking to tap into.
#2 Take the house “On-Tour” 🏗️
This house, unlike most, is portable.
Therefore it might make sense to take it on tour and drop it into other prominent places and spaces that expand out the opportunities for people to stay in it and the press coverage you can juice from the initial sunk investment into building the house.
If moving it physically proves problematic, you could digitally or even virtually port it instead.
As the detailing inside and round the house represents a genuinely compelling use-case for Augmented Reality or even Virtual Reality where you could, with the likes of a world-lens in Snapchat or an app within Apple Vision Pro, offer people the chance to step-into the house and get close to all the fine-detail that’s lovingly been crafted into this experience.
Building capability for the Icons part of AirBNBs portfolio, that you can test, then scale through super-hosts across the rest of the platform to even better showcase their homes; thus helping AirBNB stand even further apart from its competitors.
#3 (Not-so) Secret Cinema Screenings 🎞️
The last-idea at the end of the creative-deck to demonstrate an idea has legs beyond the TV script that a creative agency is scoped to produce - has two candidates which show-up time and again more than any other.
1. Create an AirBNB inspired by it
2. Integrate it into Secret Cinema
This last thought combines both of those things.
We can’t help but think this loving, faithful recreation of the house might lend itself to creating the most wonderful and whimsical Secret Cinema experience in honour of the movie’s 15th birthday; that with thousands of balloons tied to the top of it would make it a rather stunning piece of OOH too.
Only bookable via the AirBNB experiences tab, thus giving the Up house a chance of paying for itself across two different parts of AirBNBs business.
Lovely, lovely, lovely.
If you liked this, you’ll love…
Here are some other thoughts, that this idea and the AirBNB Icons platform reminded us of when we were writing this up.
1. Loads of other lovely AirBNB stays
It’s fair to say the AirBNB team have done some solid experimentation ahead of launching the Icons platform; check out some of their previous efforts we’ve particularly enjoyed from The Louvre, to the Maracana via The Windmill of The Moulin Rouge.
2. Disney Parks Otherworldly Star Wars Zone
Themed stays are a natural extension of theme parks.
The best of which don’t just take you into spaces that look like those world’s, but let you feel like you’re living in them and interplaying with the characters.
Disney are of-course the masters of this, who have recently upped their game with the continued roll-out of their Star-Wars zones across their parks; where you don’t just ride the Millennium Falcon, you get to take part in a mission called Smuggler’s Run to save the universe from The Dark Side as part of the crew.
You don’t just buy themed cups, food and snacks; you get to hang out with the weird and wonderful characters of Oga’s Cantina.
2. Secret Cinema. Levelling-up the Silver Screen
Secret Cinema’s not-so secret sauce is expanding the magic of a film or franchise beyond the screen and into a full-on IP-driven experience that they wrap round it.
Part film-screening. Part theme-park. Part Cosplay. Full fun.
See their trailer for what they put on for Stranger Things fans a little while back.
3. Heineken & The Champions League. Flexing sponsorships
It’s pretty straight-forward for passion brands with passionate fans to simply invite people into those worlds; or take the magic that may sit within fiction and bring it into the real-world.
But what about fairly forgettable FMCG brands?
Well they wrap their products, services and distinctive assets around the things their drinkers actually care about; ideally things that are enjoyed with a drink.
Football being one of those very things.
Some brands stop at simply sponsoring the property to create visibility, others go further to create cunning stunts that show they’re in-tune with the mindset of the fan.
One of the original and the best here for you from Heineken in Italy around The Champions League.
4. The North Face “On-Mountain” Stores
A simple associative hack to show TNF are a leader in the outdoors gear and apparel game; where they took their store from the streets and put it on the peaks of the Aosta mountains in Italy a few years back - a trick repeated more recently by TNF x Gucci in the Californian desert.
5. The greatest job in the world
Why stop with one night in someone’s dream location, when you can offer people the chance to re-locate and work, rest and play there for the long-haul.
Queensland Tourism cunningly created a job-listing for The Best Job in the World as a means of reminding people to come visit The Great Barrier Reef.
Until next time
As always - we’d love to know what you think. What would you do with the ‘Up’ House or the Icons platform it now sits within? What ideas do you love at the moment?
If this kind of thing is your thing, we both write regularly on other stuff too. Matt can be found building out “The A to Z of Media Planning” here. Tom’s blog can be found over here.
Until next time,
Matt & Tom