The Campaign

In light of down economies affecting households globally, IKEA Hong Kong used its 2013 catalogue to empower their customers to realize they can still refresh their home with clever use of soft furnishings like textiles. Through community management, we witnessed that fans liked to share their personalized IKEA furniture. Why not get the fans to act as ambassadors to communicate to their friends the power of textiles in customizing an IKEA furniture? Our strategy was to offer a shareable experience for the fans, where textiles allowed endless possibilities for IKEA furniture that was ‘Made Better By You.’ The custom Facebook application allowed users to create personalized furniture using iconic IKEA pieces and textiles, and further naming it after them. Personalized items were then shared to your friends through their social graph. The social experience created extensive talkability, being featured in various marketing publications including PSFK, Design Taxi, Campaign China and more. The campaign resulted in over 27,000 pieces of unique furniture, reaching over 3M people on Facebook.

The Brief

The objective was to increase awareness of just how easy it is to “Bring new life to your home, bring your home to life”. We delivered a campaign that would help bring this proposition to life in social media, while ultimately exposing as many people as possible to the new IKEA textile range. As managers of IKEA Facebook community for years, we’d seen people share how they used IKEA textiles to ‘spice up’ plain white furniture pieces. We noticed a real desire to “add a personal touch” to the IKEA experience; to improve IKEA products with a little personal touch.

Results

Over 27,000 pieces of furniture were shared from more than 6,000 unique users delivering 3,640,000 stories in friends-of-fans’ Newsfeeds. The IKEA Facebook page grew with 14,000 new fans in the campaign period, 8,104 of these from organic referrals. We achieved media coverage in various renowned online and offline publication including: PSFK, Design Taxi, Campaign China, Marketing-Interactive and Creativity-Online. With a simple mechanic, we delivered the message of the 2013 catalog and exposed a significant portion of the Hong Kong population to the endless possibilities provided by IKEA soft furnishings.

Execution

We wanted to give people a hands-on way to see how a bit of their individual creativity can enhance the enjoyment of even the most common IKEA household items. So we developed a Facebook powered mobile experience that allowed users to choose one of five iconic IKEA products and customize it using IKEA textiles. But what if you could put your own name on the creation? Playing on the naming traditions of IKEA products, each new piece was renamed with the creator’s moniker pulled in from the Facebook ID; as a plain white LACK table became a colorful [KAREN CHENG] side table, users helped us demonstrate the endless possibilities that come with IKEA textiles. As each unique creation was shared as an album image on friends’ Newsfeeds, it helped create talkability and draw more people into the experience.

The Situation

IKEA is top-of-mind for many consumers who are looking for simple and affordable furniture in any city, but IKEA Hong Kong was having difficulty retaining consumers who wanted more of a unique décor for their home. With their existing method of communication, the traditional yearly catalogue, it was difficult to communicate the potential of the iconic furniture. We needed to inspire and engage with IKEA customers outside the store, to drive interest around their new range of soft furnishings and textiles.

The Strategy

Based on these insights, the idea was born: IKEA - Made Better by You Made Better By You was a social experience that allowed users to customize, name and share iconic IKEA pieces that reflected their personal tastes, allowing them to feel, the difference a personal touch makes. We developed a program that allowed users to experience the endless possibilities provided by IKEA textiles, educating their friends through Facebook Newsfeed sharing. With a limited media budget of HKD30,000 it was crucial to encourage a lot of organic sharing to get the desired reach, thus the Facebook Newsfeed became crucial to campaign success. We know that many people in Hong Kong use the daily morning or evening commute to check up on their friends’ Facebook activities. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to get involved as they saw stories from friends popping up in their Newsfeed.