Let’s admit it: IKEA furniture is not always easy to assemble. But fortunately there’s the IKEA assembly service. Well, unfortunately not many people in Germany know about that service.

The problem: It’s a little tricky to communicate that IKEA sells complicated furniture. We thought: Wouldn’t it be likeable to showcase the IKEA assembly service in an ironic way? To admit that it isn’t that easy? Well, why not?!

We planned to create ironic billboards which resemble the problems people have when trying to assemble IKEA furniture. So we put up poorly assembled billboards in order to make people believe it was a fail. And it totally worked out: People posted photos with the caption “You had one job” etc. – and the internet seized our idea.

Blogs and social media increased our media penetration – without extra budget of course. It took one and half week until we finally declared on the Facebook page of IKEA Germany: Sorry guys, we fooled you all. And suddenly we had a viral hit.

Instead of showing what people can use to keep things in order, we simply showed how nice it is when everything is

where it should be – using motifs that depict their surroundings as neatly arranged and sorted.

After that, still not only people on the streets – even a lot people in the web (the so-called users) – everybody was talking about our poorly assembled billboards. Some were sure it was done on purpose. Others were convinced: epic fail! Suddenly we had a viral hit. When all we wanted was to put up some good old billboards. Well, billboards people want to talk about. But what we got was an Internet phenomenon people didn’t only talk about – but smiled about! Plus: the smiles of our client. Not at least because a lot of people now use the IKEA assembly service – and remember IKEA as a brand which understands them and their everyday issues.