Launch Date:

March-May, November-December 2014

Objective & Challenges:

IKEA had a problem it couldn’t seem to shake. Whilst Canadians loved the brand in their 20s and 30s, as they progressed in life, they reached a point where they believed they'd outgrown IKEA. IKEA fell off their consideration list, and this crucial audience stopped going to their stores.

The challenge:

How do you get 35+ Canadians, who think they’ve outgrown IKEA, to realize that IKEA has actually grown with them, in terms of quality and style - so that they would come back?

Insight & Concept:

Leo Burnett dug deep into the relationship 35+ Canadians have with their homes, and discovered that each home is full of unique and personal behaviours that enabled the homes to function harmoniously. In short, each home had its own set of unwritten, but well understood “rules”. As these Canadians had reached 30 and moved out and into their own homes, they’d typically taken some of their parents’ rules and then mixed them with their own. They also noticed some similar theming of rules between different homes. Once the agency started digging, they realized they’d stumbled across something really interesting that could help us reconnect with this disengaged group.

Execution:

IKEA #HouseRules – A platform to share and celebrate the unwritten rules that every house has. By celebrating these unwritten rules of every home, Leo Burnett could reassert IKEA’s relevance, not only for Canadians of every age, but also the 35+ family shoppers, by showing that the agency truly understood them. If they could connect with them on this more personally interesting level, they knew they could get IKEA back onto their shopping lists.

Leo Burnett started with the hashtag #HouseRules, and were immediately were inundated with all the unique and interesting ways Canadians live at home. Their communications then focused on receiving, organizing, and sharing these rules across a variety of media. The voyeurism of reading other people’s rules proved to be irresistible, so they placed the most popular ones into mass advertising, sharing the rules that most Canadians could relate to. They surprised some, by sending them IKEA gifts that connected with their personal rules - showing the role IKEA could play in their day-to-day lives.

Results:

Canadians found Leo Burnett’s #HouseRules compelling enough for them to actively reconsider IKEA, and show it with their wallets:

• Amongst 35+ Canadians, Leo Burnett positively shifted brand intent scores indexing 110 vs YAGO
• +12% same-store-sales increase vs YAGO, significantly above the home furnishings category which achieved only a 1% increase during the same time period
• An additional +5% same-store-sales increase vs. YAGO during the Holiday #HouseRules period
• Top-of-mind and spontaneous awareness was up +10% vs YAGO, with an increase of +12% claiming they had bought from IKEA recently
• House Rules was the highest engagement of any social campaign IKEA Canada has run to date
• Leo Burnett experiential execution alone generated 26.8 million earned impressions, $300,000 in media