Van Gogh BnB - What Makes A Successful Campaign

A study on one of the most successful campaign that won many awards.

For the first time in North America, all three versions of Vincent van Gogh’s famous “Bedroom in Arles” will be showcased in an exhibition called “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms” at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). The “Bedroom in Arles” depicts Vincent van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles, France, and all three versions of it were created in 1888 and 1889.

AIC decided to partner with the advertising agency Leo Burnett, to quickly help generate buzz for the exhibition. After much discussion, the team decided to recreate the famous “Bedroom in Arles” painting, into a physical room that will be put up for rental on AirBnb. This gave rise to the integrated marketing campaign “Van Gogh BnB”.

Through working with Airbnb, “Van Gogh BnB” would cost $10 per night and would be hosted by Van Gogh himself on AirBnb’s domain. In addition to the room, tickets to the exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago were provided, with the line “’I’m charging $10 for no other reason than that I need to buy paint. However, I will be happy to provide you with tickets to my exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago”.

Strategy Used

The main strategy of the campaign was to “Let Yourself In”, which was inspired by the curator’s vision of Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles, representing “something he was looking for all of his life, a place of his own”. The idea was to let the audience be immersed in the world of Van Gogh, helping them form an interest or a personal connection to the artist, not just as a painter, but as a person.

Providing an Intimate Connection

According to a case study, the majority of customers would like an intimate contact with a brand. In this case, the brand was Van Gogh and because the bedroom of a person represents their “most personal and intimate space”, “Van Gogh BnB” provided the audience an opportunity to be immersed in his world, providing an intimate contact with the artist.

By being inside a person’s bedroom, one is able to find out more about the personality, behaviour, thoughts and feelings of the owner. And staying in the room for one night will let the audience learn more about the artist himself; ultimately forming a personal connection with him. This personal connection is essential as it also acts as an emotional connection, which forms a close relationship between Van Gogh and the audience. Thus, this would spur the audience to attend the exhibition of someone they feel close too.

Social Media and the use of Hashtag

Social Media also played an important role in this campaign. It was used to help build awareness, channel interest and create buzz for the campaign. AIC first announced “Van Gogh BnB” room listings to the public through their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram social media page.

Subsequently, the link for booking the Airbnb room was released there with tickets for “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” exhibition soon following. However, this was only made known to people who followed AIC which majority of them were art enthusiasts.

Hence, in order to reach more audience, the hashtag “#vangoghbnb” was used to increase awareness, bring more traffic to the campaign and ultimately the exhibition. Audiences who were able to obtain a night at the bedroom were also encouraged to share photos of their experience on social media with the hashtag. The hashtag created a platform of reviews and information for interested audiences to gain insight on the campaign and exhibition.

Tactics/Tools

Leo Burnett strategically used both online and traditional marketing tools to obtain a wider reach of their target audience, achieving the objectives for the campaign. The first tool used to kick start the campaign was traditional advertising.

Few weeks before the “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” exhibition was to be open, posters advertising a room for rental were placed around Chicago areas like the train stations. These posters were made resembling newspaper adverts in the classified section, bringing back to the main strategy of being immersed in Van Gogh’s world.

The people who texted the number located on the advertisement posters were engaged in a conversation with “ Vincent van Gogh”, who would provide the date of vacancy for his still unprepared apartment.

On the 9th of February 2016, a social media post on AIC’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram page shared about the replica room of Vincent van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles, France at River North, Chicago soon being listed out for rental of $10 per night on Airbnb. Image of the replicated room was included alongside the famous “Yellow House '' painting by Van Gogh.

The post had links directing the audience to AirBnB domain where they are greeted by the host Van Gogh himself. After booking the room for one night, an email will be sent and it will be written by Van Gogh. This links back to the strategy where forming a personal connection with the artist is seen.

News of the first block of nights being sold off within 5 minutes was spread and picked up from the media. Within a week of the campaign’s public debut, vangoghbnb generated a huge amount of publicity worth $500 million of media impressions and almost $6 million earned media.

The story was covered by over 100 media outlets worldwide including the famous TIME magazine, The Japan News, The Huffington Post and even The Straits Times. News channels like Fox, NBC News, abc News also mentioned the campaign. While the campaign was being mentioned, comments were also made on “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” exhibition, helping to raise awareness, interest hence creating traffic.

On social media, thanks to the audience who shared about their personal experience on their stay in “Van Gogh BnB” and use the hashtag “#vangoghbnb”, the Art Institute of Chicago became part of the trending section in Facebook.

Integration of Tools

The areas of the perceived integration of tools are Advertising (Traditional and Online), Public relations (Earned media and media impressions) and Personal Selling (Intimate Connection).

The unique point of the “Van Gogh BnB” campaign was the main focus on personal selling. Every tool used was linked back to having or building an intimate connection between Van Gogh and the target audience. It all ties back to the main strategy which was to “Let Yourself In”, by obtaining a personal connection through experiencing the room itself or by others’ experience.

Campaign Results

The campaign brought about the largest exhibition attendance AIC has ever gotten in 15 years. When the “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” exhibition opened on February 14, AIC experienced its biggest opening attendance with 14,607 visitors during the first three days. Sales of online tickets went up by 250%, and the total attendance for the exhibition was more than 200,000, the highest-attended exhibition of AIC in 15 years.

AIC also saw an increase of 2,500 followers on their Facebook page, and at one point the exhibition trended on Facebook’s trending section. The use of the hashtag garnered 204 posts on Instagram and 34 mentions on Twitter, which further increased the awareness of “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” exhibition being held at AIC.

Due to the free publicity given to the campaign, over $6 million was generated in earned media. The campaign along with the exhibition was covered in more than 100 countries and gained a total of $500 million worth of media mentions.

Learning Pointers

The multiple award winning “Van Gogh’s BnB” campaign was a well thought out integrated marketing campaign with a creative twist to it.

By using the curator’s vision of “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” exhibition as the inspiration to form the main strategy, “Let Yourself In”, it already created that personal connection between the curator and Van Gogh. The combination of art, technology and history, helped create a fresh campaign. Through the integration of tools, the campaign was able to reach out to a wider target audience and even gained a great amount of press.

In conclusion, “Van Gogh BnB” leverages the already known platform AirBnB to produce a creative campaign using both traditional and online marketing tools to help promote the campaign, achieving record breaking results.