Background:

Self-isolation during COVID-19 and quarantine put a lot of pressure on parents pto be teacher, disciplinarian, friend, and everything else. Parents were running out of ideas to keep kids entertained within four walls.

Brief:

Suggest easy, affordable and creative ways to help change-up playtime for many families staying within four walls during the lock down.

Objectives:

Inspire as many people as possible with the idea how to spend more quality time with the little ones and have fun with what one already has, create word-of-mouth and stimulate “the movement”.

According to the consumer research data, nostalgia was very definitely in the air during the lock down, as people stayed at home and reminisced about different times. When the world outside is a dumpster fire, what’s better than making a big fort in your house and hunkering down for the day as many of today’s parents did in their childhood looking for feeling comfort and safe.

As a response to the situation, IKEA released six illustrated instruction manuals on Instagram for building a series of at-home forts using some of its most popular offerings like tables, chairs, couches, blankets, comforters, pillows, hangers, string lights and more.

Each at-home fort design mimicked the visual guides of a traditional IKEA black and white instruction manual showing a list of items one'll need to create the fort, as well as a drawing of the final result.

Insight: As far as the campaign idea was to support IKEA lovers in the difficult situation, the IKEA social media channels have been primarily selected. Only 1 post with six various at-home fort ideas (castle, fortress, wigwam, house, cave, and camping tent) have been placed a week. With the activity IKEA wished in inspire its consumers to remember times they felt comfortable and safe themselves at their homes creating similar forts in their childhood and support their family and kids in the difficult times copying forts from their past today with IKEA solutions.

Key message: #IaminIKEAhouse.

Target audience: parents of school-age kids, those who had to stay with their kids 24/7 at home replacing all activities of pre-COVID times with home-based activities and entertainment

Implementation: Each at-home fort design mimicked the visual guides of a traditional IKEA black and white instruction manual showing a list of items one'll need to create the fort, as well as a drawing of the final result.

Timeline: 1 post in IKEA social media in May, 2020, 6 weeks.

Placement: IKEA social media channels.

Scale: National.

• Reach: 1.6 million people;

• Engagement: 144 user’s photos with at-home forts implementations just in 4 days since the start of the campaign, thousands of photos till the end of it from all around the world;

• Sales: not applicable as the objective of the campaign was to entertain and emotionally support IKEA lovers who have been locked at their homes during quarantine;

• Achievement against business targets: with zero budget for production and media placement we have received +139% in reach, +391% in interactions enormous response from consumers with their photos, local and international media mentions of IKEA campaign (150 publications), Media OTS was 1 230 858 748.