The IKEA Catalogue
IKEA
Issue 30 | March 2014
Agency
SMFB
Creative Team
Creatives Alexander Gjersoe Hans Magne Ekre Web Designer Stina Norgren Designer Nicklas Hellborg
Production Team
Production SMFB
Other Credits
Account Director Kristian Kristiansen Account Managers Hanne Grobstock Mari Engen Tonje Skjetne Bjørnerem Motion Graphic Artist Arnar Halldorsson Web Producer Christoffer Lorang Dahl
Date
October 2013
Background
The catalogue launch is the single most important activity for IKEA and a huge annual event in Norway. IKEA wanted to do something that would make people talk about, and share content from the catalogue in a fresh new way.
Idea
The Social Catalogue was an experiment involving IKEA’s Facebook fans. Could they be put to work to build a new fan base on Instagram while spreading content from the new IKEA catalogue to their social networks?
IKEA fans were asked to find what they most wanted from the new catalogue, take a photo of the catalogue page showing the product, hashtag it, name it and then upload it to Instagram.
Every week, someone won the IKEA item they most desired.
The ambition was to create a digitalized, hashtagged version of the catalogue on Instagram with the 125,000 Facebook fans in Norway choosing and photographing every single item in the entire catalogue.
Results
The incentive got the fan base to really scrutinise the new catalogue and spread its content to all their friends and followers. Before the campaign, the IKEA catalogue had zero presence on Instagram. Afterwards, every page was being shared under the hashtag #IKEAKATALOGEN.
A total of 2,843 pages were shared while increasing IKEA’s total number of followers by almost 8,000%. Over 6% of Facebook fans were converted to Instagram as well while the number of Facebook fans itself increased by 10,000.
All on zero budget.
Our Thoughts
There are a few brands that are as synonymous with creativity as IKEA so the expectation is higher with any of their campaigns. Here, as with many of the company’s global campaigns,
it is innovation that hits the spot rather than executional nicety. With clients such as this, creative people have permission to do good work and many will rise to that challenge and explore any and every opportunity.
Our Norwegian friends have done exactly that, risen to the challenge and have established more of a social media presence for the brand through the time-honoured expedient of a damn good incentive.
Maybe it’s not the greatest IKEA campaign ever but it is true to their creative reputation.