Black Friday has exploded in Norway the last six years. In 2017 a population of only five million Norwegians spent more than 32 billion US dollars within 24 hours! Crazy numbers. Market research done by Opinion, shows that more than 360 000 Norwegians actually take time off from work, to hunt down Black Friday offers instead.

However, in personal interviews done by IKEA, people express growing resistance towards Black Friday. So even if sales on this day are increasing every year, we had a hypothesis that a different angle would get a positive reaction in the market.

By taking a clear stand against Black Friday, we wanted to encourage people to take care of what they already own instead, by tightening their IKEA furniture!

The idea: introduce a brand new day, to replace Black Friday, the day you buy stuff you don’t necessarily need.

We took our whole media budget and spent in on this new day instead, which we named The Big Tightening Day. A day celebrated in all IKEA stores across the country! We started off with a newsletter to the IKEA Family fanbase, and the message was immediately picked up by the media, and the response in social media was overwhelmingly positive. We then followed up with Facebook ads, films in Youtube and IKEA´s own channels. The campaign kicked off 14 days prior to Black Friday, and ended the day after. But the leaving behind a debate that lasted for several weeks.

Numbers show that the message was perceived as close to IKEA´s core business. More people connect IKEA to sustainability after this campaign, than before.

The sustainability message that implies taking a (financial) risk increased IKEA´s credibility, gave great media results and all time-high engagement.

Reports show that the shopping experience at IKEA with «The tightening day,» was received as way better than when having "wild offers".

The opening rate on email newsletter was a record high 32,4% (above average), which means it was read by more than 300.000 people (Norway is 5 million). It also sparked the very first articles.

Visitation at IKEA.no rose to an index at 109 (yearly goal: 105).

FB ads reach: 1,1 mill persons, spending only 25 000 USD (price per person reached is way lower than benchmark).

Instagram posts: reach 160.000 people / 200.000 views, organic only. The best achieved posts for IKEA ever.

Coverage in most national newspapers, radio, and also TV2 and NRK, the biggest, most important TV broadcasters. Total media effect due to PR: over 1,5 million people reached (out of 5).

And most important, it started a debate in parliament about what measures to be taken to improve peoples will to repair and reuse - using IKEA as prime example!