Hone began assisting Airbnb’s in-house agency, The Art Department, in 2016. The internal team was expanding rapidly to meet the demands of a growing global marketing department that required hundreds of pieces of content per year. Hone was brought in to help the team manage this explosive growth and create a production toolkit and guidelines for staff to utilize and ensure a consistent process.

Hone's involvement quickly pivoted to building a production playbook specific to the brand’s Experiences product. This initiative required content creation for thousands of Airbnb hosts around the world on an accelerated timeline with tight budget demands while meeting the high production value that the brand requires. Hone’s experience in working with contractors around the world and our assistance in creating a playbook that could be easily followed helped in meeting this monumental ask.

Our role further shifted as we became more embedded with the team and needs for the department expanded. Working with Airbnb's creative operations team along with their legal, insurance, and procurement departments, we refined the production guidelines, developed service agreements for outsourced suppliers, assisted in creating short-term contractor agreements, and created licensing agreement templates to standardize their production processes. This combined effort established the production process for hundreds of internal content productions Airbnb does each year.

In addition to our operational support, Hone provides hybrid production support to create content for Airbnb. In this role, Hone will act as a production service company in addition to providing agency producer support. We hire the crew, source equipment, manage and secure the locations, cast and pay talent, provide insurance and bring in director talent if required. This hybrid approach saves on producer fees and gives large public brands an easily accessible “internal” production company offering.