It seems there’s no end to the creativity in the IKEA marketing team. They just knocked it out of the park with their thought provoking refugee campaign ’25 m2 of Syria’ and now they are saving relationships with a new consumer marketing campaign. Oh yes! IKEA, with the help of Swedish agency Åkestam Holst, turned frequently googled relationship questions into the purest marketing gold.
Typical IKEA, with a twist
As a part of their ‘Where life happens’ campaign; the furniture giant launched a new website called Retail Therapy featuring some of their typical products, but with a bit of a twist.
On the new website, IKEA has changed the names of their products to match frequently googled relationship problems and the website beautifully pairs each relationship problem with the product that hopefully provides the solution. IKEA also tweaked their product descriptions for each product to read:
“IKEA is where life happens. This product’s real name is HEMNES, but right now we have renamed it to the relationship problem you just googled. All to make life at home easier for you. Because life evolves every day and everything, yes everything, can get better.”
Increased organic search engine visibility
Not only is this campaign hilarious, but it also helps IKEA get increased visibility in an even broader range of organic searches on Google (and other search engines). In other words, when users google questions and phrases like ‘My partner snores’, they might stumble across IKEA’s ‘Hemnes’ day bed and if a user would google ‘He doesn’t text me back’, the user could get a photo of a 3-port USB charger in their search result.
A few of our favorites:
The ‘I ate too many Swedish meatballs’ bicycle
Shed those extra pounds, Swedish style.
The ‘How to say I’m not interested’ garlic press
Nothing says ‘I’m not that into you’ like a killer garlic breath.
The ‘My mom can’t cook’ microwave oven
Problem solved.
The ‘Teenager average shower time’ kitchen timer
A simple solution to a complex relationship problem.
The ‘She doesn’t want to cuddle’ mattress wedge
Again, problem solved.
Well played IKEA. Well played.
