Sustainability is the topic of the moment, and as a brand that delivers ‘The Wonderful Everyday’ for millions, doing so sustainably is becoming increasingly important. Globally, IKEA aim to inspire and enable 1bn people to live more sustainably by 2030 – a strategy spanning the entire business. As IKEA use almost 1% of the world's commercial wood supply, the cost of saying this in the wrong way is huge, with consumers hyper-aware of greenwashing.

So we needed to articulate our green credentials authentically, giving customers a way to engage, ideally still with a commercial payoff. This campaign was the first step in establishing a longer-term positioning in the UK for how IKEA communicate their approach to sustainability. The idea was designed to provide inspiration to people in the short term and position IKEA as an expert on easy changes that can be made around the home, in a creative way.

We created and launched the ‘Live Lagom’ £0 range, IKEA’s first ever totally free collection.

Lagom in Swedish means ‘the right amount’ so instead of buying new, we encouraged customers to turn an existing item into something new.

We targeted communities interested in sustainability, then built momentum across social/PR with in-store co-worker how-to’s for IGTV. The communities, inspired, created their own products, which we replayed in digital channels, helping reach those harder to engage with using just IKEA’s voice.

We gathered these products to create a new version of an IKEA classic; the Lagom Catalogue. Living on Pinterest, this was a focal point for the campaign that we could return to year after year, and an embodiment of our sustainability ethos that no competitor could own. Lastly, we displayed the best ideas in-store as part of an interactive presentation, inspiring consumers to think about how they could be more sustainable.

We took inspiration from the Live Lagom programme – an IKEA store initiative that helps local customers learn how to live more sustainably. It encapsulates the IKEA philosophy towards sustainability - small changes undertaken by lots of people, adding up to make a real difference.

It was inherently Swedish, and we had a ready-made community of early movers, meaning it was authentic and uniquely ownable by IKEA. So, we set about communicating that ethos more widely to activate more of the many and build groundswell for a longer-term movement.

To maximise the impact, we segmented our audience according to their propensity to engage with the subject of sustainability, looking at items they had bought previously and store activities they’d participated in to indicate this. We then served personalised messages to acknowledge prior ‘sustainable’ behaviour and drive the next best action for that group.

This was IKEA’s first attempt in the UK to talk about sustainability and was very much a pilot project. The campaign was launched with no ATL media support and was targeted initially at receptive communities online who shared the ‘Lagom’ ethos and through the new Greenwich store in London.

As momentum grew, we paved the way for sharing £0 ideas on a broader scale – starting with the £0 Lagom catalogue being refreshed each year with new UGC ideas. Then empowering people to run Lagom workshops in their own communities, constantly creating and sharing new ideas.

It also addressed the future of the IKEA catalogue. IKEA UK have been moving away from promoting the catalogue for sustainability reasons and were looking to phase it out altogether. By creating a digital, crowd-sourced catalogue we’ve turned the problem into the solution, using the new Lagom catalogue to actively demonstrate our sustainability ethos.

We established an awareness and understanding of the IKEA sustainability ethos in the UK, with a 21% uplift in recognition of IKEA as a brand that ‘makes a positive impact on society and the environment’ compared to before the campaign (20% higher than for John Lewis). 34% of transactions driven from the campaign contained a ‘sustainable’ item (something which has been made sustainably, using sustainable materials or helps people live more sustainably).

Following the campaign, applications for the local Lagom programmes increased by 49% y-o-y, showing the impact on motivation amongst our audience. At a time when our audience is more critical than ever, and in contrast to other brands, the campaign saw amazing results from social media. Impressions totalled 6.4m, engagement rate reached 38%, there was a 73% increase in followers of the Facebook Lagom group, with overwhelmingly positive feedback from both consumers and PR recognising the authentic approach.