IKEA Retail Therapy

Background

IKEA liked to think that their products have all been inspired by how people live in the real world. The insight behind this campaign was that many everyday, real-world dilemmas could be solved or improved by IKEA's products.

Idea

What do people do when they have a problem in their lives? They turn to the internet for help. IKEA set out to help answer those cries for help when people searched in Google for a solution.

They called the idea 'Retail Therapy'.

The way it worked was they changed the name of their products. So a two-person desk with a screen separating the workstations usually called Bekant was named My Partner Annoys Me.

Go to Google and ask, why does my partner annoy me? And up pops IKEA saying, IKEA is where life happens...and everything, yes everything, can get better.

If anyone went online to find a cure for a snoring husband, a son who is glued to his gaming console or even a vain boyfriend, IKEA suggested a daybed, a pair of scissors and a well-lit mirror might help.

Results

A lot of media attention and plenty of comments in social media so far.

Our Thoughts

This is so wonderfully tongue in cheek. For starters, I heard somewhere that IKEA is the Swedish word for ‘divorce’. Speaking as someone who found the mocking laughter of his wife hard to bear as I failed to assemble a bookcase some years ago, I understand this. So IKEA pretending that it is all about making relationships better is ironic. But deliberate irony, I think. That’s what makes this so clever and also so funny. Imagine Googling ‘How can I get girls to like me’ (which quite a lot of boys do) and seeing IKEA’s solution is to buy her an oven. C’mon, you’d laugh, wouldn’t you? And laughter is the first step in a relationship.

Marvellous.