Discover the Originals
Visit Sweden
Issue 62 | March 2022
Agency
Forsman & Bodenfors
Creative Team
Art Director Johanna Hofman-Bang Copywriter Marcus H ggl f Writer Elisabeth Christensson Designer H kan Larsson
Production Team
Agency Producer Magnus Kennhed Production Company BRF
Other Credits
Account Director Ann Spennare Bengtsson Account Executive Johanna Bringef lt Planner Alena Sucher PR strategist Robert Johnsson Client Client supervisor Nils Persson Project Manager Nils Ekstrand
Date
December 2021
Background
Bolmen, J rvfj llet, Sk rhamn, Kallax and Toftan. For years the world has marvelled at and struggled to pronounce IKEA product names. What most don't realise is that the global furniture giant often names their wares after real places in Sweden. Now Sweden wants to invite the world to visit these fantastic locations.
Idea
Every day thousands of people sit on the Ektorp couch, have coffee at the Ingatorp table and light a Hemsj block candle to spread some cosiness and cheer. There is an entire country behind the funny names.
Now travellers can discover the originals, the hidden Swedish gems behind those weird IKEA product names.
“Discover the Originals” set out, with warmth and a twinkle in their eye, to show 21 of the places behind the product names with everything from Viking monuments to picturesque towns, castles and silver mines, with activities from white-water rafting, to dog sledding, fly-fishing and ice swimming.
For instance, Bolmen, located not far from Agunnaryd, where IKEA’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, grew up, and a great place for hiking and biking and picking mushrooms advertised itself as, “Bolmen – more than an IKEA toilet brush”.
The ads drove people to https://visitsweden.com/discover-the-originals/
Results
In total, some 1400 online mentions, including 710 articles, 330 blogs and 360 tweets. Altogether a total potential reach of 2100 million people in 49 countries.
Time on page spent at VisitSweden.com almost doubled. Close to eight minutes on average was spent reading about the places behind the IKEA product names.
Our Thoughts
At the heart of the campaign is a video with the good people of Lake Bolmen bemoaning how their lovely village has given its name to a toilet brush. The joke is they are actually very proud of IKEA and of being immortalised by IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad. Being dyslexic, he found it easier to give his products proper names. Chairs and desks he named after men (which finally explains the Billy bookcase) and materials and curtains got women’s names.
Kids’ toys were named after animals. The Ekorre is a toy ball. It means squirrel. So now you know.