Ikea - Come Into The Closet
Websites: Photography – Yellow Pencil
Philip Mascher (account director, Forsman & Bodenfors)
Mattias Jöngard (advertising manager, IKEA)
IKEA continues to dominate the world of affordable home furnishings, both in its native Sweden and across the globe, but it is the company’s longstanding relationship with Forsman & Bodenfors that ensured the award-winning Swedish agency walked away with one of this year’s most wanted: a Yellow Pencil for its online interactive site for IKEA closets, entitled ‘Come Into The Closet’. ‘We wanted to really focus on the bedroom and the need for organising one’s living,’ explains IKEA’s advertising manager, Mattias Jöngard. ‘We could especially see that need for women. We also wanted to showcase the width and depth of our range, which can offer a dream walk-in closet for everyone.’
IKEA has worked with Forsman & Bodenfors since 1996 on everything from long-term brand development to ongoing tactical campaigns. ‘We have a great and long relationship with our advertising agency Forsman & Bodenfors that is built on trust and a sense of give and take,’ continues Jöngard. ‘We have worked with several creative teams within Forsman & Bodenfors over the years and they have a great ability to both pass on IKEA knowledge as well as great communication skills that fit the IKEA brand within the agency.’ Philip Mascher, account director at Forsman & Bodenfors, concurs. ‘We have had a retainer relationship with IKEA for more than ten years,’ he says. ‘Campaigns are planned on a regular, rotating schedule, up to one year in advance, typically with sales goals, but sometimes perception goals, to allow creative solutions to include both execution and media.’
At the beginning of the partnership, Forsman & Bodenfors carried out its own research, which revealed that although IKEA is recognised for functional values, such as good quality at low prices, the brand fell short on emotional values. Customers could imagine buying functional items such as those for the garage, hallway or study, but they were apprehensive about buying ‘capital investment items’, such as furniture for the living room or bedroom that could be regarded as indicators of personal taste. The IKEA customer also believed that the only time something new happened at IKEA was when the company released a new catalogue.
Armed with this knowledge, Forsman & Bodenfors set about working to change these perceptions. For ‘Come Into The Closet’, the brief was simple: to sell more IKEA closets. ‘It was a very basic brief that pretty much said: “We need to sell more IKEA closets. With what message and using what media would be this most effective?”’ explains Mascher. ‘First we decided that we would need to inspire with great closets, and that it would be interesting to see unique solutions that people have come up with in their own homes – closets as a means of self-expression, closets as a means of pampering. Then we came upon the concept of walk-in closets.’ While the walk-in closet may be commonplace in the US, it was not well-known in Sweden, where people often live in smaller homes. ‘This presented an opportunity for us to use walk-in closets as dream closets, much as we have often presented fairly out-there IKEA kitchens as dream kitchens.’
Recognised worldwide for its distinctive blue and yellow stores, each complete with its own IKEA flag, a patriotic nod to its founder’s heritage, the story of Sweden’s best-known export started in 1943. From its early beginnings in the Småland region of southern Sweden to its seemingly infinite presence in homes around the world, the renowned Swedish furnishings manufacturer and retailer has come a long way since it was founded by Ingvar Kamprad more than 60 years ago. The company’s name, IKEA, is an acronym of the initials of its founder (IK), followed by those of the property (Elmtaryd) and the village (Agunnaryd) where he grew up. Kamprad already had a nose for business at the age of 17 when he started out, and even as a young entrepreneur, he focused on keeping prices low. Furniture was only introduced to IKEA lines in 1946 and six years later the company reached its first major milestone by opening its inaugural furniture showroom in Älmhult. From modest beginnings, IKEA has continued to go from strength to strength. IKEA continues to make a vast contribution to the contemporary furniture market, with sales in 2007 totalling €19.8 billion – despite the fact that the brand is treated snobbishly in the design world.
The circulation of the IKEA furniture catalogue is now said to surpass that of the Bible. Last year more than 191 million copies were printed in 56 editions and 27 languages. Not only is the catalogue a valuable marketing tool for the company, it is also a coffee-table staple for most homeowners, whether they like to admit it or not. And then there is the internet – perhaps the fastest-growing marketing medium. The internet is being used by more and more people as a source of information and last year the IKEA websites attracted 450 million visitors. ‘We are already seeing it growing and changing all the time,’ says Jöngard of the online future. ‘I think the biggest difference that we will see is how people change the way they consume online media.’
It comes as no surprise, then, that Forsman & Bodenfors selected the internet as its medium of choice when responding to the brief from IKEA. ‘We have a very close and trusting relationship with IKEA that has evolved over more than ten years,’ says Mascher. ‘Often IKEA will present us with business issues or goals, and rely on us for both creative and channel recommendations. This means we can play out creative ideas across the channels that are most suited for a particular idea and vice versa.’ At the same time, IKEA is very much involved in the Forsman & Bodenfors creative process. ‘We have frequent work meetings, rather than waiting for a longer period and then having that great “ta-da!” unveiling meeting. This creates a higher degree of engagement and investment in early concepts with the client, and lessens the risk of any backtracking,’ says Mascher.
For the advertising team at IKEA, ‘Come Into The Closet’ was very much a case of working together. ‘It really was a joint venture – from strategy and briefing to creative execution,’ agrees Jöngard. ‘For us, it’s extremely important to let our home furnishing knowledge shine through in all of our communication, and that’s why the agency’s creative team worked closely with IKEA home furnishing experts.’
The campaign had two objectives. The first, and most important, was to to increase store sales for the closet category, which was achieved to such a degree that IKEA began to have fairly serious product availability problems. The secondary, more long-term objective was to elevate closets from a purely functional role in the home to a more important way of expressing personal style and becoming a ‘treat’ purchase. ‘This is a harder objective to measure but all the signs seem to indicate that it was well achieved,’ says Mascher. ‘Among other signs we noticed a marked increase in the mentioning of closets – and specifically walk-in closets – in home decoration magazines and blogs.’
The second version of ‘Dream Kitchens For Everyone’ had just been completed, and this campaign had become a benchmark both for IKEA and for Forsman & Bodenfors. This meant a definite level of performance anxiety once creative work began on what would eventually become ‘Come Into The Closet’. But it wasn’t long before the pieces began to fall into place and the creative concept became evident. The resulting campaign uses high-end video and simple flash to highlight the benefits of IKEA’s closet collections, and personalises each product to cater to a certain audience. ‘We try to approach every campaign in the same way. Rather than get locked up in old ways of using the media we try instead to focus on the idea we have and see what we would like to do with it,’ says Jöngard. ‘Then, through dialogue with each media, we find the best solution.’
The ‘Come Into The Closet’ site features a clean layout, clear typography and crisp, vibrant flash video. This allows navigation via elevator-type buttons which move seamlessly from one ‘floor’ to another and demonstrate the features of each closet through contrasting subjects. The site showcases the benefits of the product through a virtual-reality interpretation of everyday human experience.
When it came to shooting the campaign, there were a number of issues to address. ‘Doing these major productions always creates problems during the process,’ notes Jöngard. ‘It’s natural. The thing is to see them as challenges and even utilise them to improve the final result. That said, building five complete walk-in closets and shooting in two days demanded a large crew and everyone had to be completely devoted to the project to make it a success.’
In terms of specifics, extra budget had to be made available for the project since production cost more than was planned, explains Mascher. ‘The concept for the website cost more than the original brief, which had a 30-second TV spot in mind. But after the site production was estimated, the production process went amazingly smoothly considering the complexity of the production, and the original production budget was held.’ The sets had to be built on six tall platforms so that the motion control camera was able to ‘dive’ down to the floor. ‘And then there was the cat’, says Mascher, ‘which didn’t want to do what we had planned for it to do!’ What is it they say? Never work with …
Since the project ended, there has been a definite move forward in terms of IKEA activity sites, with the launch of the third kitchen site as well as a first bedroom site. ‘We have not yet discussed another closets effort, partly because the closet category has done so well since the site was launched,’ says Mascher.
If there is one thing that the creative team learned from the experience, it’s that interactivity rules, says Mascher. Use the best set designers you can afford. Choose a director that understands the interactive medium – and try to get as much as possible right on the shoot, rather than relying on post-production to fix stuff later on. Mascher recalls ‘the cold chill that went through our spines when we discovered we were missing one of the shots in the bowling scene.’ Fortunately, the expression ‘we’ll fix that in post’ did apply on this occasion and everything worked out fine in the end. The team also shot the still images at the same time as the film shoot. ‘It was too little space and too little time and thus made everybody very cranky. We’ll never do that again.’
Seeing the different walk-in closets come alive in the first offline version was a treat for Jöngard. ‘It was then that we knew we had succeeded – and even over-delivered on our expectations.’ However, he also recalls another, slightly more worrying, moment on set. ‘We saw in one of the room settings that someone had added an accessory that could be seen as religious. We tried calling several theological institutes but no one could answer our question. Then suddenly one of the actors came along who just happened to be a professor in middle-east religion and gave us a very clear answer, so he definitely saved the day!’
As any good creative knows, there is always something that could have been done better. ‘No idea is beyond improvement,’ says Mascher. ‘We would probably give the scenarios in the closets a bit more of a twist, keep the product focus and add some unexpected events.’ That said, there was also a lot of fun to be had on the day. ‘It was quite fun to watch the talent running around on the sets that were built over six feet up in the air,’ he continues. ‘Then there was our production manager being so mesmerised by the handsome director that she managed to get her own name wrong while introducing herself to him!’ He’s also happy to pass on a little trivia: the little boy in the Indian family closet is the art director’s son.
One of the best features of this campaign is the way it successfully combines a great experience with a feeling of need. The site has so much genuine atmosphere that you automatically find yourself spending more time with it than you originally intended – and then, of course, you can’t help but forward it to others. More than this, it is great to see this burgeoning new category doing so well. Creatives are no longer simply transferring traditional ideas and means (more often than not unsuccessfully) to the internet. They are now viewing online as a medium in its own right and, as a result, we are seeing some of the most creative work in years. It’s not just creatives that are recognising this. On this occasion, it was the brief from the client that challenged the creative team by opening the project up to a wider choice of media. We look forward to seeing what they come up with next.