2020 Winner
2020 Winners
IKEA Canada
Stuff Monster
IKEA’s goal is to enable people to live better everyday lives, but to do so within the limits of the planet. To do this, IKEA has made the commitment to become a fully circular business by 2030. For IKEA, circularity isn’t just a business practice, it’s a mindset. It means rethinking the entire life-cycle of their products: from the materials used to the way consumers dispose of the items they no longer need.
Historically, however, IKEA has been the poster-child for disposable furniture: people buy it for dorm rooms, or short-term condo living, and often find themselves kicking it to the curb when they move to bigger or more permanent spaces.
We needed to communicate IKEA’s mindset while combating this perception of IKEA furniture and encourage Canadians to adopt circularity in their own lives.
The purpose of our initiative was to strengthen the IKEA brand and grow penetration beyond our current shoppers by demonstrating our commitment to sustainability. The campaign objectives were to:
- Develop an emotional story to capture customer attention, inspiring them to live sustainably
- Increase IKEA’s brand perception as a sustainable company
- Enable Canadians to go circular through IKEA’s new sell-back program
- Communicate the IKEA journey from mass consumption to mass circularity
Insights & Strategy
Through our research into life at home, we found that people feel weighed down by their stuff and are looking to declutter. The human desire to declutter, however, can have unintended environmental consequences. As the most wasteful country in the world per capita, Canada has a long way to go when it comes to decluttering responsibly, but 43% of Canadians say they want to find more sustainable solutions to do this.
We set out to show Canadians that a more responsible and sustainable solution exists. We wanted to highlight the beautiful possibilities we create when we pass on what we no longer need to someone else to enjoy - quite literally to give their old furniture new life.
Execution
IKEA’s belief in sustainability is so strong that for their biggest campaign of the year, instead of driving people to buy new furniture, we actually spent the dollars getting customers to see the beauty in buying used. Yes, a campaign about not buying our products.
We developed a two-pronged campaign approach to (1) inspire people to reconsider second-hand furniture and (2) give people the tools to extend the life of their old furniture and make sustainable choices.
To drive inspiration, our hero film, “Stuff Monster,” shows that letting go of our used furniture in a responsible way isn’t just good for the planet, it’s good for us too. The monster, made up of old IKEA furniture, served as a metaphor for the belongings we accumulate that weigh us down. The story follows the monster as it gives away pieces of itself to be reused, becoming lighter, happier, and ultimately back to human form as she sets out the last of her furniture with a ‘free’ sign.
We re-targeted people who had seen our inspiring message with a series of short-form social and digital videos driving awareness of IKEA’s Sell-Back program: a first-of-its-kind initiative essentially paying customers for their used IKEA items, and transformed our in-store “as-is” section into a showroom for used consumer furniture.
We supported our message across the country in OOH and social, where we didn’t try to sell new products, but rather showed Canadians how to give old items a new life. We even took over Canada’s largest secondhand resale website to promote used IKEA furniture. But if our audiences absolutely needed to buy something new, we launched a series of circular products made from reused sustainable materials so they could still be part of IKEA’s sustainable future.
Results
From a long-term brand building perspective, we were successful in driving long-term equity, brand love, and perceptions of being unique from our competitors. Our sustainability message broke through and resonated with consumers, shifting perceptions of the brand.
Most importantly, we moved one step closer to our commitment, enabling people to live a better everyday life within the limits of the planet. Through our sell-back program, we diverted over 30,000 items of furniture from the landfill and provided Canadians with simple solutions to live a more sustainable life at home.