"FACEBOOK SHOWROOM" Online Advert for IKEA Stores by Forsman & Bodenfors

Type of entry: Strategy
Category: Best Low Budget Campaign
Advertiser: IKEA
Product/Service: DEPARTMENT STORE
Agency: FORSMAN & BODENFORS Gothenburg, SWEDEN
-: Mediaedge:cia (Media Agency)
Photographer: Lennart Sjöberg (-)
Advertiser's Supervisor: Sara Zakariasson (IKEA)
Describe the brief from the client:
In the autumn of 2009 we were asked to engage people in the opening of the new IKEA store in Malmö, Sweden. It had to be something that could live its own life, create a ripple effect and extend the news about the new store beyond the borders of Malmö.
Creative Execution:
The execution made sure that the thing that actually made people spread the word about the new store in Malmö actually was IKEAs products (in this case the new showrooms in the brand new store). The entire campaign is driven by IKEAs products and the generated conversation about them. As the bearer of the content we used an extremely well established function on the worlds largest social network. The combination really made people eager to participate and for everyone who participated the word spread to all of his/her friends.
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.
We decided to take advantage of an already existing, widely used forum; Facebook. First we created a Facebook profile for IKEA Malmös store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. We then kidnapped the most popular function on Facebook; photo tagging. As the store was built and showrooms completed, we uploaded pictures of them to Gordons photo album. The first person to tag their name on a product, won it. Thanks to Facebooks built-in functions, the pictures spread to hundreds and thousands of people. Through the newsfeed, profile pages and links posted by users.
Describe the results in as much detail as possible.
Since the launch of the campaign Gordons profile has spread across the globe and he is now friends with people from all over the world. IKEA Malmö has been talked about all through the internet and thousands of blogs have posted showroom pictures when writing about the campaign. Tweets about the competition poured in from all directions. To summarise, IKEA Malmö conqured all major social media sites with one smart competition on facebook. After the competition ended Facebook changed their terms and conditions to rule out a re-run of the campaign.