Taiwan is a small island saturated with information from a plethora of brands. We have about 150 different TV channels broadcasting TVCs and shows with product placements non-stop – not to mention the commercial bombardment from Facebook, banners, and websites. In order to digest the over-sized information load, people have started to filter. According to a report from AC Nelson Taiwan, the percentage of people who trust print ads or TVCs dropped by 20% compared to 2009. It’s difficult to sell brands or products through advertising alone.

We decided to build the biggest product ever built by IKEA – an IKEA HOUSE, a house designed inside out with IKEA concepts.

Invite: After we built the house, we asked people to send us the reasons they would like to host an event there. We posted the responses on our Facebook fan page and IKEA website, and also created three online videos to push the news.

Engage: We selected 100 gatherings to host over a two-month period. They could have the house for the day and decorate it anyway they like.

Amplify: Our guests took photos, checking-in to social media, tweeting and sharing their favorite products and designs online. All the gatherings were also recorded on our Facebook fan page.

Stimulate: For all the submissions in both the Invite and Amplify stages, we gave away “buy one, get one free” coupons for food offered at the IKEA restaurant to attract people to come and visit IKEA stores.

1. The campaign generated high awareness and high interest in visiting IKEA stores. Seventy percent of those surveyed were either interested or very interested in visiting IKEA after exposure to the campaign, 7% more than our original KPI.

2. During the campaign period, our target for visitor traffic was 4.5%, but we ultimately surpassed this by an average of 10% every week.

3. We also surpassed our sales target, which means we surpassed the previous year’s sales performance, even though we only spent 1% in paid media compared to the same period during the previous year.