2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

For decades, Torontonians have had to venture outside of the downtown core
to get to IKEA. Until now, the brand experience was a “pilgrimage” out to
Etobicoke, Burlington, Vaughan or North York. This resulted in many would-be customers opting out of the hassle of the IKEA trip in favour of more easily accessible options closer to home. In short, IKEA was starting to be at risk of feeling like a suburban brand for suburban people.

This campaign’s key objective was reaching a downtown Toronto target in a way that felt true to the city living experience. It needed to find a way to build genuine excitement for a first-of-its-kind format and drive foot traffic into the store.

Reality is more fascinating than any fiction advertisers can dream up. With the new downtown store catering to small-space living (more than 2,000 products for immediate takeaway, a Swedish Deli, larger items for delivery), they knew they had something that Torontonians would be interested in - but instead of telling them a fictional story about it, they found it much more impactful to show them the reality of our solutions on a smaller, urban canvas.

To grab attention from an always-busy big city media landscape, and to prove to Torontonians that we truly are “made for downtown living,” they set out to do something that had never been done before. Rather than just putting up a bunch of billboards all over the city, they made living ads out of the city itself - using real homes (with real people in them!) and turning them into instantly recognizable IKEA “billboards.” It leaned on iconic IKEA brand assets like the logo and price call-outs from the world-famous catalogue, and the homes instantly felt reminiscent of the iconic in-store showrooms. Except these were real, living windows into the world of potential that IKEA could unlock in the homes of Torontonians.

To deepen relevance and drive engagement, it targeted specific neighbourhoods around the city, all within a predetermined radius of the new downtown location. The living billboards highlighted all kinds of people and living spaces, especially small-space living, striving to represent and celebrate the diversity of life in Toronto. This approach allowed us to buck the conventions of a traditional store launch, and instead create a buzzworthy and shareable moment for passersby.

The campaign achieved much more than a side-eye from the neighbours (though they’re sure there were a few of those). These billboards were a key part of a launch campaign that garnered 62+ media stories and 31+ million impressions.

While this specific execution was in-market (“in-neighbourhood”?), the new downtown store saw foot traffic 41% higher than the baseline, not to mention the noticeable lines that formed outside the store.

In quarterly brand tracking, isolated for Toronto, it saw +4% in TOM awareness,
an increase in brand trust by over +1%, and, importantly, Toronto consumers feeling inspired by IKEA lifted by +1%.

Credits

Chief Creative Officer: Aaron Starkman
Executive Creative Director: Mike Dubrick
Creative Director: Joel Holtby, Zachary Bautista
Art Director : Zachary Bautista
ACD / Writer : Geoff Baillie
Strategist: Jay Fleming, Shereen Ladha
Integrated Producers: Terri Winter, AJ Merrick
Group Account Director: Kiara Wilson
Account Director: Megan Christopher
Account Supervisor: Erica Francis
Account Manager: Chaityadeep Singh Mainee
Production Company: Undivided Creative Inc.
Director: Jeremy Thompson
Director of Photography: Jeremy Thompson
Production Company Producer: Christa Lindsay
Printer: ProPrint
Audio: Vapor
Media: Carat
Account Director: Tracey Cronin
Digital Performance Strategist: Kevin Martins

Clients:
Johanna Andrén, Head of Marketing, IKEA Canada
Jordan Sequeira, Country Marketing Campaign Leader, IKEA Canada
Marissa Fischer, Integrated Media Leader, IKEA Canada
Brooke Lougheed, Country Interior Design Leader, IKEA Canada
Lisa Huie, Public Relations Leader, IKEA Canada