Like love, good advertising needs chemistry that’s beyond the best laid plans. A great illustration of some of the crucial parts to a successful ad campaign can be found in a recent article written by Dan Neil and published in the LATimes.com Business section.
In IKEA’s Burbank store and the guerrillas in housewares we find that going viral, a marketer’s nirvana, sometimes has very little to do with what campaign creators set out to do.
It begins…
For reasons known only to the pop-culture gods, IKEA — the Swedish retailer of cheap, lingonberry-flavored furniture and other shinola — has suddenly become a ubiquitous presence in the ether. Example: in August, when the 2010 IKEA catalog came out, people went utterly bonkers because the designers had changed the print font from the familiar Futura to Verdana — an esoteric difference, to be sure. The story rocketed to No. 2 on CNN.com’s most-read list, according to Mona Astra Liss, IKEA’s director of public relations. But for the passing of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the story might have gone to No. 1.
As the article points out, it might be IKEA’s self-recognition of its “playful” brand that lets guerrilla video shoots occur with virtually no repercussions … in fact, embraced.
Ground zero of IKEA’s mind share is, strangely enough, the Burbank store. No less than three popular Web videos and one rather large motion picture have been shot there in the last three years. In the film “(500) Days of Summer,” Tom and Summer romp through the Burbank store, playing house amid the store dioramas of modern kitchens and bedroom furniture.
The Burbank store also furnished the backdrop for last year’s IKEA-funded Web TV series “Easy to Assemble,” which followed actress Illeana Douglas as she struggled to adapt to the life of a schlub in blue-and-gold polo shirt . . . I mean, an IKEA team member.
“Easy to Assemble,” which got picked by CBS for its www.tv.com outlet, was a fairly radical bit of marketing. It was stone-cold branded entertainment — the IKEA logo is in every shot. Yet IKEA also gave Douglas and her collaborators room to gently mock it, right down to the tiny pencils.
The first class lesson in “Add Love 101?” As Neil points out: “Marketers who would capitalize on user-generated content must also be prepared to let the inmates run the asylum.”
Your first assignment? Pray for chemistry!
