IKEA: Ikea Responds To Balenciaga [image]

Credits & Description:

Title: Ikea Responds To Balenciaga
Agency: Ikea, Acne
Brand: Ikea
Country: Sweden
Entrant Company: Acne, Stockholm
Advertising Agency: Ikea, Malmö / Acne, Stockholm
Production Company: Acne, Stockholm
Executive Creative Director: Johan Holmgren (Acne)
Creative Director: Morten Kjaer (Ikea Creative Hub)
Senior Art Director: Tiago Pinho (Acne)
Art Director: Isaac Bonnier (Acne)
Senior Copywriter: David Aronson (Acne)
Copywriter: Joel Lindblad (Acne)
Photographer: Anders Kylberg (Acne)
Assignment Leader: Louice Alvarson (Ikea Creative Hub)
Client: Simone Page (Ikea Creative Hub)
Project Manager: Lovisa Friman Bendz (Acne)
Date: April 20, 2017
Outcome:
Unique media impressions: 165 055 907. Earned media: $6 136 964. Interactions: 2 025 139. Media budget: 0. The IKEA-Balenciaga-Handbag became a twitter phenomenon: 97% of the whole buzz happened on Twitter, mostly by retweets.Highlights:A post from PILASACI, “IKEA respond to Balenciaga‘s $
145 rendition of their $0.90 Frakta Bag”, reaches more than 24k retweets.A selection of news articles that were shared in social media (total shares): adweek (88.7k), boredpanda (86,6k), dailybest.it (58,7k), demotivateur.fr (33,1k), Mashable (35,6k)The post was picked up by a wide range of different media:Vogue, The Guardian, NY Times, Fast Company, The Independent, High Snobiety, most viewed article on Dazed, Adweek, Mashable, Pick Of The Day Creativity, Creative Review, Huffington, Grazia, Harpers Bazaar, Hypebeast, Teen Vogue, Architectural digest, Fortune, Elle, Marie Claire, iD, Daily Mail & Trendhunter.938 million twitter impressions
Campaign Description:
IKEA’s blue plastic bag, FRAKTA is used by millions of people and part of popular culture. A statement demonstrated when social media drew attention to big similarities between it and the one from Balenciaga. We decided to flirt back with an instant response to the discussion taking place online. Playing the role of original designer and innovator of big blue totes, we released a guide on how to identify an original FRAKTA bag and jumped right into the conversation.
Execution:
The possibility to carry out this work was identified on Thursday, April 20, 2017. The work was produced during the morning of Friday 21st and it was sent to the Ikea markets the same day. As IKEA usually works, the material was distributed to all IKEA markets and it was their own decision to work with the material as they pleased. Some of the markets posted it on their website, others posted it on social media.The ad went viral the week after.
Synopsis:
As an ongoing brief within the agency, IKEA wanted to communicate their values–that they are a company making the everyday better for the many people by what they call democratic design. They wanted consumers to know that behind every product they create, the everyday life of people is taken into consideration - their viewpoint? “why should function, quality and design be a privilege for the few, if we can do something about that?”At the same time, Balenciaga’s Spring Summer 2017 collection features a series of handbags inspired by bags that are part of popular culture. One of them, the now famous “Carry Shopper”, is remarkably similar to IKEA’s blue plastic bag, Frakta - but with a price of 2 145 dollars. The similarity was picked up by online media outlets and individuals alike.
Strategy:
From a strategical point of view our target group are the people involved in the discussion in various media. It was not us who drew the initial similarities between these two bags but these individuals themselves, meaning they already had a relation to IKEA to start with. In its turn making them a great and diverse group of people to tap into with our response.Our approach was inspired by the pop culture practice of identifying counterfeits – such as pattern-checking on a Louis Vuitton bag. The aim was to naturally extend an already organic discussion without saying neither yay or nay. The ad combined fashion’s visual language with the layout and style of social media based humor formats to stay relevant to the platform.
Relevancy:
This response ad was not only produced specifically for social media, but also thanks to it. The conversation we wanted to take part of was already taking place. As one of the story’s protagonists we knew we wanted to contribute with our point of view.Our ad shows what advertising can be in a social media driven landscape: a place for honest and engaging conversations where brands can stand side by side with their audience. We made consumers not only engage with our brand but also with each other as individuals by sharing, tagging and commenting.