Comm 372 Case Study: Airbnb #WeAccept

Caroline Riley, Haylea Maciko, Daeviana Blount, Taylor Horrell

Airbnb is a company that was created on the basis of helping people feel like they belong. Their mission statement is, “to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.” Their mission statement is a prime example of how they try to create an environment for anyone and everyone.  The #WeAccept campaign launched by Airbnb in 2017 made significant strides to the company’s two founding principles of inclusion and respect.

Airbnb found themselves in hot water after receiving backlash that guests were discriminated against by the hosts. In late 2015, stories of individuals who were denied housing because of their skin color started to pick up online. Harvard had a study in which they found that “housing requests from people with distinctly ‘African-American sounding names’ were 16 percent less likely to be accepted than guests with white-sounding names (Conditt 2019).”

HBS Associate Professor Benjamin Edelman, Assistant Professor Michael Luca, and doctoral student Daniel Svirsky looked at 6,400 AirBnb listings in Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., last July. They created 20 different accounts, 10 men and 10 women, with a mix of overtly white- sounding names and overtly African-american sounding names. In their study, they were able to find that “Hosts were 16 percent less likely to approve profiles of people who appeared to be African-American than profiles with white-sounding names.” (Pazzanese 2015) After this in 2016, the hashtag  #Airbnbwhileblack was used by users to express their personal experiences with the app. There was even a user who sued Airbnb for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Airbnb answered to this by creating their “Community Commitment” policy which required hosts and guests to agree to treat everyone in the community with respect, regardless of race, disability, sex, and religion .

As Airbnb established themselves as a company committed to respect with their “Community Commitment” policy, they felt they couldn’t sit back in 2017 when the U.S. enacted a travel ban against several Muslim countries. Airbnb saw this as an opportunity to fight prejudice which then created the #WeAccept campaign. Their communications plan laid out 4 steps to meet their goal and in turn, create an extremely successful campaign. The plan included communicating their core values, sparking a conversation, starting an initiative, and finally, meeting their end goal. Each of these steps goes hand in hand with defining a problem, setting goals and objectives, implementation, and evaluation.

To communicate their core values, Airbnb wanted to emphasize their Community Commitment. With the backlash and controversy they faced in 2015, Airbnb defined their problem and knew they needed to fix their business model to look within and combat misconceptions. As stated, the Muslim ban in 2017 was the catalyst to start the #WeAccept campaign. Airbnb saw an opportunity to change the conversation that was surrounding them regarding discrimination.

Airbnb wanted their customers to feel that they belong. With so many refugees needing housing, Airbnb offered their homes. From a PR lens, this humanized the brand despite the recent controversy they faced. To lay out the plan, their target was minority people and refugees. They reached out to their hosts to see how they wanted to help. Hosts were able to volunteer their homes to refugees or people affected by natural disasters. In addition, Airbnb offered their hosts to suggest a cause they were passionate about so Airbnb could potentially aid in the resolution of the problem. This reiterated their community commitment and the concept of #WeAccept.

Airbnb sparked a conversation by featuring a series of diverse individual headshots to their Instagram page. This series lasted for 12 posts, and highlighted both workers and hosts that represented people with various ages, or racial backgrounds. Airbnb has an active presence on social media, so when this campaign came out it grew attention quickly. Unlike their normal aesthetic style on their Instagram the headshots stuck out on their feed. Airbnb took their campaign to more than just Instagram, finding success in Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. To maximize their publicity, the company ran a Super Bowl commercial at the 2017 game. The game fell only days after Trump signed an executive order closing the borders, so there was a short amount of time for Airbnb to get their message together. 113 million viewers tuned in to the game to see the 30 second ad, which provided a great reach for their first step of the campaign.

As the campaign was going on Airbnb simultaneously shared a commitment to provide short-term housing over the next five years for 100,000 refugees, survivors of disaster, relief workers and other displaced people. On top of that the company would be donating $4 million over four years to the International Rescue Committee. This is a key move for the company for their campaign because not only are they promoting changes to societal issues but they are taking further initiative themselves to seek change. Airbnb implemented their core values and sparked the conversation through the #WeAccept campaign on their socials. The success of this campaign came from a few key areas. Transmedia provided coverage of the campaign across multiple media outlets such as print, mobile or social. In doing this the camping was able to reach all audiences and not a smaller demographic. Next the campaign encourages participatory culture for its users. Users were able to contribute to the campaign through takeovers and social movements. By keeping up with the times the campaign was able to target specific audiences through new technology. They were able to grow with their audiences, specifically families.

As explained, Airbnb saw an opportunity to act and take charge of a situation where they felt there was injustice. To measure their initiative and determine if they met their end goal, they used strategies such as providing links on their social media posts where people had the opportunity to donate to chosen organizations standing in solidarity and with the same morals and values executed in #WeAccept campaign. These posts also encouraged Airbnb hosts to share their homes. These KPIs measured the total volunteers that signed up to host and the amount of donations to Airbnb’s selected organizations.

We dove into research analyzing the concept of enacting change through social media campaigns. In the article titled, “Do human values matter for promoting brands on social media? How social media users’ values influence valuable brand-related activities such as sharing, content creation, and reviews (Nikolinkau & Phua, 2019),” it discussed how brands normally use psychographic and behavioral information from users’ profiles to target consumers and analyze the effects of advertising campaigns. There has been a shift, however, in social media behaviors that rely more on human values, self-enhancement, and openness to change. The article mentioned the #WeAccept campaign and how brands are increasingly promoting social cause initiatives, informational or educational content, promotions, consumer reviews. “It would therefore be efficacious for companies to find out, based on human values and their effects on social media activities, how to identify and appeal to users who are more likely to share different types of branded content and engage in specific content creation activities or write brand reviews (Nikolinkau & Phua, 2019).”

 

The results of the #WeAccept campaign did not only affect Airbnb in a positive light, but created the opportunity for so much more. According to an article written by Shorty Awards, About 85% of reactions relating to the campaign were positive, opening the door for Airbnb to take over various forms of the media. The #WeAccept campaign generated over 87 million total impressions, making it Airbnb’s 3rd largest driver of Earned Impressions.

Along with the commercial the company ran during the Super Bowl in 2017, Airbnb was extremely active on social media for the duration of the game, extending their reach even farther. The #WeAccept was the #1 used advertiser hashtag during the Super Bowl that year. This was ultimately due to the fact that Airbnb generated over 33k tweets during the first half of the game, passing up any other advertiser.  As a result of this, the company saw a huge increase in site visitors from the US and Canada in not only the week following the Super Bowl, but a month after as well.

Focusing more on the reactions via Facebook and Instagram, content regarding the campaign was shared over 90,000 times and received over 500k likes. Targeting a specific audience, Airbnb decided to invest in promoting their campaign video on Facebook reaching the screens of over 19 million viewers and shared 100,901 times, standing as their most shared video of all time.

Most importantly, this campaign generated results that touch upon much more than media statistics. Over 15,000 volunteer host sign-ups were resulted from #WeAccept.

To gather a second opinion on the #WeAccept campaign, we consulted PR professional Katie Brashear, the PR Account Director at Akerink PR & Marketing. We reached out to Katie asking her thoughts and opinion on Airbnb’s #WeAccept campaign, and how the PR professional for Airbnb handled the campaign. Katie was incredibly insightful in her analysis of this campaign and praised Airbnb for their initiative, thoroughness, and emphasizing their values as a brand throughout the campaign. Katie stated:

“The PR team, along with all others involved (e.g., the social media team, the digital marketing team, the advertising buying / media buying team, the legal team, the operations team, the video production team, etc.) did a fantastic job at recognizing a crisis when Airbnb guests accused the company of discrimination and then immediately took action by developing a “Community Commitment” policy. The policy reinforced acceptance and required its users to agree to treat everyone in the community with respect, regardless of race, disability, sex and/or religion. The policy alone is a powerful message to all who participate with Airbnb that disrespect and prejudices are not tolerated – no matter what.

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. government announced a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries. The time was right for Airbnb to leverage this news (newjacking) to combat prejudices and misconceptions through a multi-platform campaign using the hashtag #WeAccept. This hashtag was used throughout the company’s social media channels and in a 2017 Super Bowl advertisement. The video for this campaign was visually humanizing and emotional. The music for the video added impact. It was quite compelling and tug at peoples’ heartstrings. It was relatable. The video was also unique in the it veered from featuring its properties and instead focused on the faces of people of different races, religions, etc., located throughout the world.

Airbnb announced in a press release that supported this campaign that it promised to provide short-term housing to at least 100,000 people over the next five years and donate to relief efforts. Airbnb also reinforced its promise to help refugees find housing and commit $4 million to the IRC over the next four years.

The Team set up parameters and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in advance so they could measure the success of the campaign in a multitude of ways. The campaign was overwhelmingly received as positive at 85%. The Airbnb website visitor count increased by 13% in the U.S. and Canada in the week following the 2017 Super Bowl. And the video received 19 million views that year alone. Those are excellent results.

Overall, I think Airbnb’s effort resulted in a successful multi-platform national campaign. It included measurable results on everything from social media strategy and execution, to public relations efforts and charitable donations, to video and commercial production and more. The team worked fast, they were open and honest with the public, they took action to do the right thing.

The campaign was recognized in the Shorty Awards and considered one of the top social media marketing campaigns of recent years.”

Airbnb’s #WeAccept campaign sets a great example of a company taking charge to address issues of prejudice and discrimination while still reinforcing its core values. By taking charge like this, AirBnb was able to demonstrate that businesses can use their influence and resources to point out societal issues, and promote a world that is more inclusive. They showed other brands that when a company lines up their actions with their mission, it can regain trust from consumers and also make a meaningful impact on society.

 

Here is our Presentation!: 372 Airbnb Case Study

 

Works Cited

Conditt, Jessica. “Airbnb’s Rehabilitation Tour Doesn’t End with a Super Bowl Ad.” Engadget, 19 July 2019, www.engadget.com/2017-02-08-airbnb-diversity-super-bowl-ad-rehab-tour.html.

Gamble, L. (2019, September 4). Breaking down Airbnb’s #WeAccept campaign. Medium. https://medium.com/@l.gamble/breaking-down-airbnbs-weaccept-campaign-f4f46f6c640f

Nikolinakou, A., & Phua, J. (2019). “Do human values matter for promoting brands on social media? how social media users’ values influence valuable brand‐related activities such as sharing, content creation, and reviews.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 19(1), 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.1790

Pazzanese, Christina. “When the ‘sharing Economy’ Doesn’t.” Harvard Gazette, 21 Dec. 2015,  news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/12/when-the-sharing-economy-doesnt/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2023.

“#weaccept – the Shorty Awards.” The Shorty Awards – Honoring the Best of Social Media, shortyawards.com/2nd-socialgood/weaccept. Accessed 20 Sept. 2023.