IKEA has a timeless mission: ‘creating a better everyday life for the many people.’

Sustainability is a big part of this brand promise, and the direct incentive for this brief.

Brief:

Prove that IKEA is committed towards a sustainable way of doing business.

Objectives:

Engage with our customers. ?No hard KPI’s provided.

We formulated a second KPI along the way: retrieve at least 4200 pieces of furniture.

Environment

Thousands of pieces of furniture are discarded each year. Furniture that is still in good condition, but no longer matches the drapes. That’s a double loss because those items of furniture are still in good shape - and could still make someone happy - and because this waste ultimately contributes to the depletion of the earth’s resources.

Culture

Brands tend to look to consumers, to reign in overconsumption. IKEA recognizes the responsibility of businesses, and is taking action.

As the world’s largest furniture retailer, IKEA saw an opportunity to make a statement on sustainability during the most commercial day of the year: Black Friday. Where everything revolves around buying, buying and more buying.

We turned this around by asking customers to sell their old IKEA furniture back to us on ‘Bring Back Friday’, giving it another life, and reselling it in our stores.

The strategy is twofold.

Firstly, making a statement against overconsumption hardly seems credible, coming from IKEA. So we needed to show we mean business, when it comes to sustainability. Actions speak louder than words. So we claimed the most commercial day of the year, Black Friday, and turned it upside down.

Secondly, we knew that others would make a lot of noise about deals, low pricing, and once in a lifetime opportunities for consumers. We knew this would make our fun, constructive and inviting tone stand out. Effectively, it turned “buy this now!” messages into reminders for our message.

The campaign video also reversed the chaos of consumerism, showing what the world would be like if we would all just turn things around.

On radio we introduced Bring Back Friday by playing a doubly reversed voice recording. Sounds complicated, but please take a listen, you’ll get the idea.

The campaign ran on YouTube, radio and online on social media through influencers and displays advertising.

This national campaign ran for only 14 days (20 November 2020 through 3 December 2020), but had to be stopped after 5 days, because of overwhelming interest. All time slots had been taken.

After 5 days, 19.061 pieces of furniture were offered back to us, which surpassed our goal for the entire year.

The story of Bring Back Friday reached the whole of Holland, two times over, all the available time slots - COVID, of course - were fully booked within 5 days and 240,000 people have already registered their furniture online.

But perhaps most importantly, this campaign signals the simple message that 'a better everyday life' is about more than selling (or having) more things. IKEA understands that it has a responsibility towards curbing consumerism.

And we are fully prepared to act on it.