”Where Life Happens” is all about being there for people in their everyday lives, in various emotional ways.

The insight here landed in trying to own one of the most emotional situations there are; getting the news about becoming amom. And instead of just showcasing our products, we proved that IKEA can be there for you in more ways.

At first, the ad looked like an ordinary IKEA-ad, with an odd headline asking you to, literally, pee on the ad. Because if you were pregnant and applied a urine sample on the marked area, the offer in the ad changed right before your eyes and presented you with a new, better price, the IKEA FAMILY PRICE, reminding you to join The IKEA Family Club for better prices on cribs. You didn’t need to bring any pee soaked ads to IKEA, this was was an interactive reminder about the better price.

The technique and innovation for this ad took about 4 months to complete and was developed in close collaboration with medical engineers. To make the interactive functions of this ad work, we had to make several technical advancements within the existing innovation that is a pregnancy test. Pregnancy test strips were used as a starting point, which relies on antibodies that bind to the pregnancy hormone hCG, resulting in a color change. For scaling up of this technique and adopting it to the physical format of a printed ad, our team have used their experience in development of surface active materials for microfluidics and medical diagnostics. Careful selection of materials, together with a controlled capillary flow have been crucial for the success of this ad. Technical advancements made during the process have the potential to improve medical diagnostics, according to medical engineers at Mercene Labs.

This activity ( the ad ) cost us less then €30 000 including media and total production. Awareness/Observation in Sweden was 33% (!) which is approximately 2 million people (18-65 y.o) and in this segment women with kids/5 y.o we hade over 50% observation.

In comparison we usually need a media investment in Sweden around €750 000 to create that kind of awareness/observation.

The brand preference in the Target audience that had seen or heard about the activity had increased from 65% to 79% (+14%).

Product liking in the Target Audience that had seen or heard about the activity increased from 59% to 69% (+10%).

The Crib is completely out of stock in Sweden.

The ad also created approx 12 Million dollars in earned media.

Over 1650 other publications ”republished” the ad in editorials and articles.

This ad is relevant in the media category, because it revolutionizes how traditional print media can be used. It re-invents print advertising in a creative and unusual way, all within the boundries of the IKEA brand concept, Where Life Happens. A concept about being there for people in their everyday lives.

One of IKEA´s most important target audience is families with kids. This is a target group that stands for approx ?45% of the turn over. But over the last years we have seen a drop in preference especially in families with new borns. IKEA has been perceived as a distant functional generalist, and when having a baby you are all about emotions. The objective was to increase product liking and preference in this segment (women with newborn kids up to 5 years old). In this activity the strategy was clear, we needed to showcase that IKEA understands and highlight this target group, and of course put our products in this emotional moment to increase product liking.

IKEA is the most well known brand in Sweden and have been around since the 40-ties. People love Ikea and the brand but not the products in the same extent. The objective is to increase liking for Ikeas products because we see a huge correlation between product liking and brand preference, long term sales and visit. The strategy is to use the fact that everybody has a IKEA product at home and show how IKEAs product is a part of every life changing moment. Instead of showing how IKEAs products solves functional problems we try to show how IKEAs product solves (or a part of) emotional problems. By putting a price tag on the emotional moments that are the everyday life, we increase the intangible value of the products.