Anatomy of a product launch: Airbnb
How Airbnb introduced 50+ innovations to their audience in their Winter Release
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Here’s how Airbnb launched 50+ new innovations:
✅ Announcement Video
✅ Launch Page
✅ AirCover Page
✅ Press Release
✅ Resource Center Announcements
✅ Newsroom Email
✅ Social Media
✅ Footer
Announcement Video
In the professionally-produced video, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky starts with the story of how the pandemic changed our notion of work, “untethering” people from where they have to work. He then goes on to highlight five of 50+ new features as part of their Winter Release:
"I’m (even more) flexible
Translation Engine
Accessibility Review
Verified Wifi Speed
Aircover
While the 9-minute video is on the longer side, it does a good job of demonstrating the new features and the value they provide to Airbnb’s users.
Winter Release Landing Page
The landing page of the launch embeds the launch video, highlights Aircover as the premier feature of the launch, and lists out the name and a one-sentence description of all 50+ features.
I like this approach because while some of these features are fairly small, in combination with all the others it makes the launch feel more substantial. Wrapping the smaller ones together with “bigger” features gives them more visibility and improves the likelihood of them being used.
Aircover Landing Page
Linked from the launch landing page is a dedicated landing page for the Aircover product that highlights Aircover’s features, a comparison chart, and frequently asked questions.
Press Release
A press release was published to Airbnb’s newsroom complete with feature highlights, product images, and quotes by Brian Chesky.
Press
Wallpaper.com: Airbnb is reshaping itself for a fast-changing future
Techcrunch: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky discusses the future of work and the one thing he’d do over
Yahoo Finance: Airbnb CEO: We are in a work and travel 'revolution'
Resource Center Announcements
Airbnb’s Resource Center hosts all their educational content for hosts and they published two announcements as part of the launch:
Post introducing AirCover (with embedded video below)
Newsroom Email
People subscribed to Airbnb’s newsroom newsletter received an email announcing the launch:
Social Media
Airbnb took an interesting strategy with this launch on Twitter, deciding to have Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky publish the teaser, announcement, and subsequent features over the next few days to his account—and just had the @airbnb account retweet Brian’s posts:
I’d be curious to know why they took this approach because at first glance it doesn’t make that much sense.
Not only does Airbnb’s twitter account have hundreds of thousands of more followers, but the Airbnb brand is also much more well known than Brian Chesky’s personal brand. For people who don’t know who the CEO of Airbnb is, they’d probably be more likely to engage and amplify Airbnb’s brand account than Brian’s.
On the other hand, brand accounts are usually the target of upset customers with complaints so maybe they wanted to minimize potentially negative engagement on this launch announcement.
Airbnb smartly did not post anything about the launch to their Instagram feed as it would have been incongruent with their existing Instagram strategy—publishing daily photos of beautiful homes and listings. This is a great example of having a social strategy, knowing your audience, and knowing what content and messaging are appropriate for various channels.
Curiously, Airbnb has not posted any content to their Facebook page since March 2021. There must be some reason because it wasn’t just overlooked for this launch. Facebook is a massive channel and their page has 16 million followers(!) – it’s very strange to not see them leverage it for any content.
Homepage Footer
The Winter Release was added to the footer of the Airbnb homepage under the title “Learn about new features.“
Final Thoughts
My rating: 🏝 🏝 🏝 🏝 / 5
I loved the presentation and bundling of the features in this launch but thought that the social strategy could have been executed much better. It felt like the launch was aimed more toward the press than potential/existing users, and if that was their goal they achieved it, but a better social strategy could have helped them towards that goal as well.
What do you think of this launch? Anything you would add or improve upon?
I’d love your thoughts – leave a comment below!