Annually, 11 billion kilos of furniture are thrown away in Europe alone. IKEA as a leading furniture brand has a role to play. True to its company purpose, IKEA wants to help customers live a more sustainable life at home. Therefore it does a lot of campaigning around sustainability, permanently in store and owned digital channels. In fact IKEA has a turnover objective of reselling second hand furniture in its Dutch stores. IKEA also has a strong opinion about used furniture: “Every piece of furniture deserves a second chance”. As most are designed to last longer than currently is the sad case.

IKEA aims to raise brand awareness through communication around this belief and gain in its positive impact score as it indicates that its intentions are perceived positive and trustworthy.

(both monitored on a monthly basis through its own brand tracker)

Black Friday is known for high discounts and selling as much new stuff as possible. To counter this, we made the statement that something new in your home doesn't necessarily have to be new. In the run-up to Black Friday, we gave away all of IKEA’s precious ad space to sellers of second-hand IKEA products found on Marktplaats, the Dutch eBay. Their old furniture could be seen across all our billboards, social, and in print. We even got them to record their own radio ads.

Old furniture is often thrown away for the wrong reasons. Not because it is broken or out of style, it is simply because we bought new furniture. Our research shows that there is a spike in discarded furniture around Black Friday, because this period is all about buying new stuff at high discounts. IKEA Netherlands wanted to counter this, so we decided to give away all ad space to sellers of second-hand IKEA furniture. This way, we made the statement that something new for you does not necessarily have to be new.

In the run-up to Black Friday we searched for real sellers of second-hand IKEA furniture on Marktplaats, the Dutch eBay. To keep it authentic, we used their photos, voices and sales stories for the campaign. Their imperfect photography and writing style made the campaign stand out and added believability. In addition, the campaign was implemented on all our available owned channels. We stopped advertising our new furniture everywhere and gave full attention to second-hand. Each item was visible within its local region where its seller (and ideally its buyer) live. Every billboard had a QR code with a link to the original post where people could buy the item from the seller. The campaign ran across multiple media (OOH, radio, print and social media). Owned media, accelerated by people posting about it and press covering this ‘other’ Black Friday approach.

The campaign blew up immediately. It was on the news because a big furniture retailer, like IKEA was not promoting its own furniture but donating all its ad space which is, of course, contrary to the usual promotions and sales seen during Black Friday. From all across the Netherlands consumers started to reach out to IKEA if they could also advertise their piece of second hand furniture. It even contributed to the discussion in the Netherlands as to whether Black Friday is still relevant and should be stopped.

During the campaign awareness increased with 5,7% and during the campaign period the highest positive impact score increased with 7.7%.

A staggering 33.7 million earned media reach was achieved.