Results and Effectiveness

The meatballs event not only put IKEA in the Singapore Book of Records for record sales of 249,375 meatballs in a day, it also increased its sales index to 108% and 141% at Tampines and Alexandra respectively News channels, radio stations and online portals covered the event positively from 7th to 11th March 2013, garnering $183,991 worth of media coverage. Consumers engaged themselves on Facebook and Twitter, making mentions specific to the meatballs. The dent in consumers’ confidence in the brand was quickly restored as evidenced by the positive results in PR, media and most importantly, sales results.

Creative Execution

To create the groundswell, we tapped on the nation’s love for time-limited offers by offering IKEA meatballs at 10 cents per piece for just one day on 8 March 2013. The key objective was to reassure consumers about the quality of meatballs and importantly, regain their trust for the brand. Timing was critical to ensure that the negative publicity generated is immediately turned around at the most opportune time. We announced the 10-cents meatball event on Straits Times and TODAY on the day of the event itself and leverage the real-time and social connectivity power of FaceBook, Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #meatballmoment to engage and generate buzz from the ground.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

IKEA, the Swedish furniture giant was dragged into the European horsemeat scandal that began early this year. As a global brand, IKEA Singapore was implicated and removed the meatballs from their shelves as a proactive measure whilst pending examination for horsemeat contamination by AVA (Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore); which turned out to be negative. Despite Ikea being a trusted brand amongst the many people locally, the horsemeat scandal had shaken consumers’ confidence in the brand’s safety and quality image. IKEA Singapore had to respond fast. IKEA had to reassure consumers about the quality of their meatballs and more importantly, regain their trust in the brand within a short turnaround time. Timing was critical to turn things around before the brand damage became indelible. The big idea was to silence the scandal and generate a new and bigger buzz on a national level.