IKEA found itself in a challenging position – front-of-mind awareness was slipping, the brand had fallen behind on key metrics including trust, price and likeability and brand penetration had fallen by six percentage points across five years.
IKEA’s relatively small footprint of stores in the UK restricted its ability to grow penetration so organic growth was slow. IKEA knew that to reverse its fortunes it needed to showcase its full value and win back lapsed customers.
Idea
IKEA had become best known for its Billy bookcases and great value proposition but the brand knew to stop decline and stimulate growth that it would need to change customer perceptions and highlight how IKEA (and its products) were central to home life.
IKEA revolutionised its communications - streamlining its campaigns to fall under one overarching proposition: the ’Wonderful Everyday’.
This new strategy positioned IKEA as the provider of a more wonderful everyday life, where they sell customers solutions to problems, not just products for spaces. This approach was designed to help IKEA diversify what customers went to IKEA to shop for and most importantly - how much they spent.
In line with the new proposition, IKEA significantly upped its brand messaging budget and placed increasing importance on AV channels – the brand would now run AV copy for 47 weeks a year (compared to just 20 weeks a year previously).
Chapters of the ‘Wonderful Everyday’ story focused on activities not products – cooking not kitchens, entertaining not dining, sleeping not beds – to increase emotional relevance.
With storytelling such a key element of the new strategy cinema was well placed to work for IKEA – the big screen could help bring IKEA’s expertly crafted stories to life in an uncluttered environment delivering emotional impact and shifts in key brand perceptions.
60” creative edits were used to launch each chapter of the ‘Wonderful Everyday’ story. IKEA used the broad AGP buying route to deliver engaged reach for its campaigns and cherrypicked key titles alongside this, buying into film packs (including The Girl On The Train and Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them) where the audience fit was perfect for a specific chapter.
