The launching of the IKEA catalogue is the most important promotional activity for IKEA. And this year we wanted a whole new take, based on IKEA's wish to inspire and enable people to live a more sustainable life. People about to buy new furniture, often needs to get rid of something. So we decided to help our customers sell their old furniture in national media. Focusing on the stuff we needed to get rid of, was our way of helping customers prepare to buy new furniture from the new catalogue, and at the same time raise sustainability awareness.

Selling single pieces of old furniture in the national media, and sharing the advertising space with our customers, sends a powerful message of sustainability. We showed that we meant business in finding new homes for old furniture, by putting them before our own. At the same time the focus on IKEA and the news displayed in the fresh catalogue increased due to the impact of the campaign, resulting in increased sales.

We asked customers about to buy new IKEA-furniture: "Can we help you sell your old furniture?". We then chose approx. 50 real people for the campaign, and started collecting their old furniture. Then we produced TVC spots for these old products featuring the sellers phone numbers, so people could contact them directly. For 8 weeks we shared all of IKEA´s advertising space with our customers. All products were sold during the campaign, and a powerful message was sent to raise sustainability awareness.

All old furniture sold out, and still we had a 40% increase in sales of new products online. Sales in stores increased by 5,5 %. All ads featured the IKEA-catalogue as a packshot, and number of downloaded apps increased from 115,000 to 200,000+. The campaign scores an all-time high, on liking and awareness, compared to previous campaigns.