Every year, IKEA Art Event works with contemporary artists from around the world to create an art collection. With the IKEA vision “to create a better everyday life for the many people”, art should be something that is accessible and affordable to as many people as possible.

This year, eight artists, including Virgil Abloh, Craig Green and Filip Pagowski, each designed a contemporary IKEA rug. The collection was limited and in Belgium there were only 109 carpets available. The exclusive nature of the collection makes it extremely desirable all over the world. However, in other countries people were buying several carpets at once, simply to sell them again for a big profit on eBay. The IKEA pop-up experience in Paris even ended up in a brawl.

IKEA Belgium wanted to avoid this and ensure each carpet found the most suitable owner.

Art is emotional and subjective. Some artworks touch you, others don’t. We believed that only people who were truly touched by the Art Event collection should be eligible to buy it. But how could we realistically know if a person was touched by a piece of art?

Introducing the IKEA (HE)ART SCANNER.

Through innovative brainwave monitoring technology, we managed to measure the response of each potential buyer with a high-tech headset as they were browsing the carpets from our collection. The only way they could go home with one of these highly popular carpets, was if they had a significant emotional reaction to a specific carpet.

This way, IKEA was sure that every piece from the collection would end up with someone who truly appreciated it.

The campaign had two main objectives:

1) Ensure each carpet finds the right owner

2) Generate enough buzz and conversation from a very limited product range.

In order to get people excited about this campaign we drove anticipation through a launch event for social influencers.

The message was simple yet clear: even though the IKEA Art Event collection was highly exclusive, everyone had an equal chance to buy these popular rugs.

To amplify the activation, we created social media assets for IKEA’s owned platforms, as well as drove earned coverage through traditional PR efforts.

With this concept, IKEA managed to counter the typical ‘first come first served' principle and instead recognize the value of art – and the connection people have with it. Art is made to touch people, that’s what makes it so valuable. We wanted it to be accessible to anyone who truly loved it.

An EEG (electroencephalogram) detection device was used, which was adapted to work with our tailormade code. We were able to detect beta and gamma brain waves, movement, facial responses, heart beat and brain electrical activity itself; and transform all of this into easily understandable signals. When people looked at each carpet, our specially designed algorithm captured and analyzed brain and body reaction data in real time.

This data was then promptly translated into an uplift score, which was projected next to the rug they just saw for the first time. If the uplift was sufficient, they could buy the rug. If not, they moved on to try the next one.

That way, during a week in store, hundreds of consumers had experienced in real time a totally new and fair way of buying.

Most of the collection was sold out in just a week.

None of the belgian rugs were resold on eBay

No brawls

Queues of people every day, happy to be there and wait to live the experience

PR results:

media reach: 35.840.120 in 7 different countries so far

more than 65 articles in Tier 1 media around the world. 42 only in Belgium, which means almost all the media outlets covered it.

All of the vehicles with positive coverage. No one speaking negatively about the experience, as it happened in other countries.

No crisis

ROI: x 3.0