Nordic furniture companies are known for communications that feature their beautiful and sleek products, with relentless close-ups of gorgeous wood gain and sexy handles. This is all in the effort to showcase their take on the Scandinavian design tradition.

While that looks lovely and is a strong narrative, we needed to do something different If we were going to help Bolia.com get out of the financial crisis alive.

We decided to ditch the static approach and be more dynamic, inspirational and ultimately, more relevant to younger, more affluent consumers.

The creative expression had to revolve around “New Scandinavian Design” but it needed to extend beyond nice looking furniture. To succeed, the creative strategy had to create a fundamental cultural shift in how the brand was perceived. In other words, we had to:

Make furniture become an expression of people’s personality and attitude.

This became furniture as fashion. We developed a simple, but compelling creative strategy:

To unashamedly ape fashion campaigns to create communications that wouldn’t look out of place advertising perfume or designer suits.

The new creative platform was summed up in a simple statement:

No One Lives Like You

The work leveraged interesting characters, big coffee table books instead of brochures, and moved from static print advertising to artistically crafted creative universes. It build soundscapes that appealed to the audience, hosted elaborate parties and collaborated with artists to expand beyond the traditional confines of conventional Scandinavian furniture brands.

Traditionally all Nordic furniture companies aligned their communications around longevity and based their expression on the heritage of modern Scandinavian design. It’s a strong narrative but is also static and increasingly out of touch with the dynamic and inspirational mindset of younger affluent customers.

Ethnographic research showed their deep love of the aspirational communications of fashion brands, which are more dynamic and have communications that appealed to the audience’s love of expressing and building their identity through the creative universes they constructed.

This group was hit hard by the financial crisis, and their house moving and subsequent furniture buying had come to an abrupt halt.

We discovered their pain wasn’t just economic, it was emotional.

For them, moving wasn’t about functional aspects. It symbolised their achievements, a sign they were making their mark on the world.

We wanted to appeal to this motivation by making them think of furniture in the same way as fashion. An aspirational expression of their own personality and a dynamic narrative about their achievements in life.

The driving insight that build our creative universe was formulated as:

The spaces we create are who we are.

And it is still the driving force 10 years later.

When the campaign launched in 2010, the revenue decline was immediately reversed: from €37,701,831 in 2008 to €117,151,651 in 2018.

In comparison, their main competitor experienced a dramatic decline in revenue from €314,366,521 in 2008 to €225,993,303 in 2018.

Bolia.com’s year-on-year growth has surpassed all objectives:

For the period, average annual growth was 40.5% in-store and 47.5% online.

The increase in sales translates directly to profit, which averaged €4million between 2010 and 2018 with steady yearly increases.

Brand Asset Valuator tracking has shown positive developments from 2010 – 2018 on key areas:

Distinctiveness: +131%

Relevance: +73%

Reputation: +187%

Dominance: +576%

Brand studies from 2010 showed three words being highly associated with the brand: Unknown, Cheap, Generic

In 2018 the words most strongly associated with Bolia.com had shifted to: Inspirational, Quality, Beautiful.

The campaign has provided an ROMI of €23.45 since the new creative strategy was implemented in 2010.