Brief Explanation

The IKEA Customer Built store campaign is a great example of a promo and activation, as it focused on a month of campaign promotion, which led to a major in store activation. Promotional activity centered on a competition to recruit local customers to lend a hand in getting the new IKEA Marsden Park store ready for opening day. The competition was launched through a series of content films that provided viewers with a call to action, which led them to our campaign Facebook app. The content series announcement was underpinned with a thorough PR and social media campaign, which drove earned media and online engagement through the IKEA owned channels. The campaign culminated in an activation in-store a week before the opening day, on which our competition winners came to lend a hand, with everything from assembling furniture to ball pit testing and meatball tasting.

The Brief

IKEA has been bringing Democratic Design and Swedish culture into the Aussie home for the past 40 years. 2015 marks the start of ambitious expansion plans for IKEA. The first store to open would be Marsden Park in Sydney’s North West, which would give Sydney its third IKEA store. Our challenge was to open the new store in a way that would capture the imagination of locals and drive visitation. With the new Marsden Park store set to be Sydney’s third, we had to do something different to create excitement in a market that already boasted two IKEA stores.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Coverage included 116 pieces of individual coverage across, radio, TV, print and online, including the likes of Channel 7 and 9 news, The Daily Mail, mX Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne and PSFK. The campaign reached an audience of 53,285,055, resulting in a cost per touch ROI of $0.006. The campaign contributed to visitation exceeding targets by 20% for the first four weeks of opening

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

With 20,000 pieces of furniture to assemble, the task for IKEA co-workers was enormous, so a campaign inviting the local community to come and lend a hand was welcomed with open arms. IKEA Marsden Park would be the world’s first Customer Built IKEA store. A month out from opening we launched films, inspiring locals to apply for a variety of roles. The hunt was on for budding Assemblers, Ball Pit Testers, Comfort Coordinators and Junior Interior Designers. The films were launched with an integrated media campaign including a national PR rollout and supported social media. The campaign captured the imagination, with national news outlets scrambling to cover the story and thousands of Aussies applying to help-out. Competition winners were chosen and invited to spend a day helping IKEA co-workers put the finishing touches to the Marsden Park store. IKEA rewarded the helpers with IKEA vouchers and they also became the stars of the new ATL print campaign.