House of Smiles

Client

Airbnb

Year

2016

Scope

Experiential, Brand Activation, Campaign

TL;DR

“Belong Anywhere” with Airbnb’s house of smiles. Fans were invited to capture their warmest welcomes for their favourite band at Laneway, Singapore’s biggest indie music festival.

Co-creative lead · Art director · Designer

Airbnb welcomes bands home in collaboration with fans at Laneway Festival, Singapore

Context

To get young adults more familiarised with Airbnb, where else would be a better place than the biggest indie music festival in the city?

Placing themselves right in the middle of the music festival with an eye-catching structure, Airbnb hopes to make a splash at Laneway by bringing their brand ethos to the people; Below Anywhere.

Role

As one of the co-creative leads, I was involved with the conceptualisation of the campaign. I also worked as the art director and designer, coming up with graphic visualisations that plays with the brand language and colours.

As part of my job scope, I was also involved in client presentations, conversations, and production of the project.

Process

Looking to bring Airbnb to Laneway in an authentic way, we wanted to celebrate the people and their favourite bands; Elevate a regular concert experience by bringing people together.

Lots of concepts were explored: Replicated rooms of each band, giant bouncy castles, a jumbo travel trunk, but we ultimately ended up with what Airbnb does best, a home.

Before the big day, we hosted a series of competitions to seek out each performing band’s biggest fans with a question what they would serve up as hosts for these bands. The winners were then tasked to host their favourite band right in our Airbnb house.

Together with our production partner at UNTITLED, we fabricated the Airbnb House of Smiles from scratch.

It’s exterior stood out as one of the tallest and only walled structure at the festival. Its vibrant colours contrasting with the greens. Its exterior was lined with fairy lines for the sunset with the sides of the house lined with tote bags for visitors to draw on, led by a local artist.

On its fronts were hammock chairs which encouraged visitors to lounge from our home, peeking a vantage view of the stage. Roaming team members and a branded stand gave away branded freebies to any visitors to our home.

Our vision was to bring the concept of “home” to Laneway, where everyone belongs and are welcomed.

In the interior of the house, we had an all mirrored interior filled with long rainbow strings and fairy lights. Visitors are encouraged to take an instant photo and leave a smile for their favourite band and pin it in the house for when they visit later.

Four groups of lucky fans get to host their bands in our House of Smiles to showcase all the smiles left behind. They even got to present and share with the bands their favourite local delights, crowd sourced from our competition earlier.

Together, we unlocked the ultimate fan experience and showed how you can belong anywhere with Airbnb.

Outcome

The event welcomed over 3,000 smiles at the Laneway Music Festival.