Here’s a clever marketing idea from IKEA Norway that’s almost laughably simple.
The furniture retailer wanted to get pictures of its merchandise out on social media. But instead of just shoveling photos onto Facebook and Instagram, the company had a better idea. Why not just get its social media followers to do it?
In Norway, every household gets mailed an IKEA catalog, so people are pretty well-versed in the products. In order to get them talking about and sharing images of its products, IKEA encouraged its social media followers on Facebook and Instagram to snap pictures of furniture items on the pages of the catalog, and post them under the hashtag #ikeakatalogen along with the item’s name. As an added incentive, every week, IKEA would give away an item to one of the posters.
The result? Within just four weeks, the campaign was able to successfully recreate IKEA’s print catalog online, after every item in the catalog had been photographed and uploaded. The campaign, the brainchild of Oslo based agency SMFB, succeeded in dramatically increasing IKEA Norway’s social media following and engagement, especially on Instagram, where it went from having 0 to 12,000 followers.
Here’s a video about the campaign and how it was executed.
