The Airbnb Story.
This is the story of how Lianne and Hayley, a same gender couple, landed a campaign for Airbnb, using WECAST, and kickstarted their career.
In December 2018, we did not have any of the casting studios in Cape Town using us yet. Dani and I were just beginning a series of client dinners, where we introduced ourselves and what we were doing at WECAST. to the casting teams at the studios.
One of the largest and most prominent casting studios in Cape Town, is Kayos Casting Directors — if you’re in the industry, you’ve worked with Kayos before.
We unfortunately were not able to meet the full Kayos team for dinner however, as film (and casting) season in Cape Town was well underway. We did manage to grab a coffee with Kay, the owner, at a lovely spot in Muizenberg for a quick intro.
The chat went well. Kay love’s system-based solutions and was interested in how WECAST. worked, but she had concerns over the logistical aspects of integrating their team’s existing workflow for castings and organizing talent. At this point, we were not able to start working with Kayos right away for two reasons: Firstly, some technical issues (which we soon solved) and second, we needed to still prove ourselves as the fresh new brand that nobody had heard of yet.
One day, half by mistake, we got a brief for the upcoming Airbnb campaign that Kayos was leading — shortly after seeing the brief we got a friendly call from Chris, the head casting director, explaining what was needed.
In short, they were trying to cast real same-gender couples who loved to travel, and had used the Airbnb platform before. By real, they meant no acting, they wanted an authentic bond and connection. At this point, there were no options for the client to see.
The job and role were listed on the WECAST. platform, and it was shared to our Instagram page. In rapid time, we had 11 amazing couples that suited the brief. This was an incredible result, and all thanks to our community getting involved and sharing the opportunity to friends. See below. Thanks @Nicsduddy for the help.
After they applied for the role on WECAST, this is what the client saw.
Lianne and Hayley had no experience in the industry. They had never done a shoot before, they hadn’t even been to a casting or audition before. What’s more, neither of them had considered even being in the industry. But they were perfect, the client loved them and so did the casting team at Kayos.
Shortly afterwards, they were confirmed for the job and flew to a 3 day shoot for Airbnb, all expenses covered of course. An amazing experience, and amazing feedback from the client on Lianne and Hayley.
This shows on-camera experience is not always necessary, there are LOTS of jobs looking for people that are not necessarily with a traditional agency, and casting teams and clients love to see new faces — real and relatable people.
Since this shoot, Lianne has chosen to be active on WECAST and has gone to several castings and done further featured jobs. On a personal note, Kayos is now one of our primary clients.
There are countless other success stories similar to this that show never-before-booked talent can also book incredible jobs using the WECAST platform, getting full-service, agency-representation for the jobs they choose to apply for.
We’ll be sharing one story a week. We hope that, if you are thinking of getting into the industry, their stories inspire you. We look forward to writing your story here too someday soon.
