Insight
In Russia, there are a lot of dull cities, one-type apartments and bored faces. Russians don’t change the interior of their homes for years, because they are scared that this complicated process will take a lot of energy and, most importantly, time. So how to brighten up the interior life of an apartment in a quick and easy way?
Ikea, the expert in transforming living space, had the answer through its new Ikea 2013 catalogue, which offers bright textile ideas and gives a new life to a home. Even just one detail can brighten up an interior. Ikea offers hundreds of solutions. But how could it show people a fast way to transform the interior of an apartment and inspire them with bright ideas?
Strategy
Partnering with e:mg, Ikea set two main goals for its campaign: first of all, to show the target audience that an interior can be changed very easily, without any specific efforts. Secondly, to show that an interior can be changed very quickly, in just a few minutes.
But how could it demonstrate this in an interesting and original way so that people would remember and appreciate the idea? The agency decided to act out of the box. It selected a common and familiar space - Gorky Park - and transformed it into what would be completely unexpected for a city park space – a large and comfortable “apartment” with lots of rooms and attributes of a home interior.
In order to demonstrate the range of solutions offered by Ikea, the agency decided to change a few interior spaces all at once and transform them in just three minutes by only applying different colour and textile solutions. And Russians could find the options of these solutions in the new Ikea 2013 catalogue, add them to their home interiors and give their homes a new zest of life.
Execution
Change the mood in just three minutes? Repaint the colours into bright ones right in front of your eyes? Do it easily, creatively & effortlessly? Ikea does it and managed to change the whole look of the park in just three minutes.
That’s how it all happened: it decorated Gorky Park in Ikea style – the entrance banners were wrapped by colourful textile, big lamps were installed resembling Ikea’s along the parkway, near entrance and stage. There was 1 km of textile used for this. The stage itself, the parkway, the main gates, the lounge zone and stairs were represented in Ikeastyle. A large “apartment” was furnished and decorated with Ikea items. All together there were a few “rooms”: a living room, bedroom, kitchen and playroom. And that’s when the fun began: just in three minutes a whole army of 120 flashmobers completely refashioned the whole space and changed the look of the park: they changed the textile look of pillows, lampshades, drapes, carpets, curtains, napkins, while creating a whole new interior. Then they danced and changed their robes and caps, ran towards the main fountain, danced with other flashmobers, and set out 100,000 bright-coloured balloons in the sky. The viewers were so captivated that crowds of them followed the dancers to the fountain. They laughed and danced and they simply had absolutely no chance at all for a bad mood! Because just like changing colours, people’s mood was brightening too. The campaign lasted four days.
Results
One million people saw the redecorated look of the park entrance, with 450,000 people visiting the event in Gorky Park. A further 10,000 watched the live broadcast of the event. During the three days, Ikea distributed 5,400 catalogues and around 3,000 new members registered to join the Ikea family at the event. Around 2,000 people took pictures for a cover of a new catalogue.
The stunt gained coverage in 417 publications and four TV reports, earning an estimated PR value of 40,074,616 RUR ($1.2m).