Airbnb “ Live in the Movies”

The Oscars is the world’s famous awards event in film industry, which generates millions of attention and leads great discussion in the society per year. Many brands also create interesting and creative campaigns or topics that can connect with the Oscars to attract people’s attention.

In 2016’s the Oscars, Airbnb created a campaign on Twitter called “Live in the Movies” which attracts 63 million impressions. Jasmine Atherton, Airbnb’s head of social for Americas said that they realized that the Oscars were such a huge moment, but they were not the official sponsor of the event, which means that they cannot pay and advertise it. Instead, they use Twitter as the platform to make the connection with this event. They posted a question on Twitter with the hashtag #LiveInTheMovies# said that, if you could live in any movie, what would it be?

Then they started to match homes listed on Airbnb with nominated films in the Oscars. Besides, they also asked people what movies they wanted to live in and why on Twitter, for people who tweet the most interesting ideas can get free stays at the house that matched their desires. It soon became the hottest topic on Twitter, and received thousands of responses, and generates 6.5 times new followers on Twitter versus their daily average.

One of my favorite houses in this campaign is the one that matched with Avatar, which is really cool with the big French windows and great views. And I hope one day I could go there.

Social media is an awesome platform for advertising, PR, and marketing, which all the brands should take advantage of. And from this case, we can see that Airbnb is very creative that used social media to make the connection with the Oscars and at the same time increase its brand awareness and image.