Airbnb is no stranger to clever marketing campaigns, although some of them haven't ended so well.
This time last year there was the Birdhouse campaign, which led to threatened litigation for brand confusion from HomeAway. The ill-fated campaign saw many birdhouses crafted to look like host's homes, and then placed in a live oak in New Orleans - accompanied by a commercial, the campaign quietly faded away.
This year Airbnb is back with a less controversial, more data-driven approach to marketing a year's worth of Airbnb growth. It's a map (available here) that is explorable in 3D. Click and rotate the earth, and then zoom in on any destination in the world to see the "real-time" Airbnb activity.
The quotes are necessary because it's not entirely clear what the dataset is, or how real-time and accurate the representations are. Of course, this data is mostly proprietary and surely city governments would have a field day if the controversial company offered up exact numbers on daily check-ins and guests staying in a city on any given day.
Other little tidbits include fun facts of Airbnb usage throughout the world, mostly focusing on the busy New Year's Eve timeframe.
Regardless, it's an interesting marketing effort that meshes interactivity with a data slant to show how truly widespread Airbnb has become over the past year.
Other marketing assets include the following video focusing on New Year's Eve: