Airbnb × Warner Bros. · Brand Activation · 2024
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - The Deetz House on Airbnb
Led by our Creative Director.
Cannes Lions 2025, Brand Experience & Activation
A real stay, not a set visit
Coverage driven by the guest experience
Brief
Bring the world of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice off the screen and into a place people could actually book - a film activation built as a real, stayable Airbnb rather than a press stunt with a rope line.
Challenge
Film marketing is crowded with replica sets and pop-ups that photograph well and are forgotten by Monday. The brief was to make a title activation people would compete to get into and talk about long after opening weekend.
Approach
- 01Built the experience around a single insight: the strongest film activation is not a set you walk past, it is a house you spend the night in
- 02Directed the experience narrative and spatial design so every room delivered a story beat from the film instead of a photo backdrop
- 03Worked to studio canon and Airbnb host standards at once - practical, liveable, and fully in-world
- 04Engineered the moments guests would film themselves, so earned reach came from the stay rather than paid media
Three pillars
Set design led with traditional theatrical craft over high-tech effects: real textures, handmade detail. Tim Burton's language carried the look - stripes, distorted proportions, elongated shapes, dramatic color. Lighting and SFX did the storytelling, marking the line between the living world and the Netherworld.
Two films, one world
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was the focus, but Burton built a world where both films coexist. The experience took the original's iconic charm, amped it with Netherworld twists, and ran November 16-27.
Outcome
Cannes Lions 2025
Press and social beyond paid
Studio canon, host-grade execution
Results
- Cannes Lions 2025 Gold in Brand Experience & Activation
- A full ground-up build of the Deetz house - studs and all - rather than a dressed set
- Creator and celebrity visits, including Charli D'Amelio, carried the experience across social
Gallery
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