THE IKEA CATALOGUE

The IKEA catalogue is an institution. For IKEA, it sets the commercial tone for the whole year. It contains the key IKEA range of new and existing products, the prices (which are set for the entire year) and is distributed via letterbox drop to 100% of deliverable households in the metropolitan area in Perth and Adelaide over a two-week period in August. It is the cornerstone of IKEA’s marketing program. It is the distillation of the IKEA brand and fundamental to driving IKEA’s annual business performance.

A successful catalogue and catalogue launch is vital and supports a successful sales year for the international retailer. Further, historically research has clearly demonstrated the link that recall and retention of the catalogue correlates directly to increased store visitation as well as spend per visit. Hence, it is vitally important that people not only receive the catalogue, but keep it, interact with it and are inspired by it.

CATALOGUE RECALL ON THE SLIDE

However, IKEA’s annual Global Brand Capital Research was showing that in Western Australia and South Australia recall of the IKEA catalogue had been in steady and significant decline over the last 4 years, slumping to an all time low in 2010.

OUR BRIEF WAS CLEAR

Get the catalogue into homes and get people to keep it there for a whole year.

STRATEGIC IDEA

The IKEA catalogue is big with over 370 pages of inspiration, and it takes up space. Space that – in today’s tough climate - is worth something. What if the catalogue ‘paid its way?’ What if IKEA paid people for the space the catalogue takes up in the home? And, the longer people let the catalogue stay, the more they could make.

STRATEGIC EXECUTION

We told West and South Australians that they would get paid ‘rent’ if they gave the catalogue a home and would continue to pay them rent for each month they kept it there.

IMPACT

After 8 weeks Perth sales were +13.8% against a goal of +3.8% on the previous year’s budget. Adelaide +7.0% against a goal of -0.7% on the previous year’s budget.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

The campaign spend was $1.3 million. After 8 weeks, IKEA had a return of $39.5 million in sales representing a ROI of $30.38 for every $1.00 spent. Or over 3000%.

Why not give a small space ad a big idea? We turned the print ad into a promotion that would get people talking. In a fun acknowledgement of what romance can lead to, customers can claim a free baby cot if their baby is born on November 14, which is 9 months from Valentine’s Day.

We’ll start meeting our new customers in November. In less than 24 hours the ad went viral. 1.7 million views on IMGUR, 821,000 on 9GAG and #1 on the front page of Reddit. The public created memes. The ad was picked up by news sites such as: The Daily Mail, Wall Street Journal, Mashable and Design Taxi. It was even seen in far away Ireland, where customer demand led to their store announcing they would honour the same offer. And all of this happened because people liked it enough to take a photo of their newspaper and upload it online.