IKEA challenged us to mastermind a social activation that would bring attention to 2014’s catalogue launch. The launch is an offline ‘event’ which needed some online attention in order for the catalogue not to just end up in the waste bin at the end of the week. The IKEA fans enjoy to impersonate a true interior designer. This insight inspired us to develop the idea to find ‘IKEA’s next interior designer’, the winner was to win a 2.500 euro giftcard and the winning room was brought to life as roomset in the IKEA Amsterdam store. We started an IKEA Pinterest board and called on people to put together their own favorite bed- and bathroom. We reached 6,5 million people on our social platforms and blogs, fans generated 20.683 re-pins resulting in 1.3 million views. In fact, we created the first large Pinterest Brand activation in the Netherlands.

We started an extensive IKEA Pinterest board containing all NEW catalogues bed- and bathroom images and products, resulting in over 300 pins. We called on people via direct marketing to put together their own favorite bed- and bathroom board. The most inspiring board won a € 2.500.- IKEA giftcard and the realization of the room in an actual IKEA store! After a month the winner was chosen by a jury consisting of IKEA’s interior designers.

Since Pinterest is a relative small platform in the Netherlands scale needed to be added by a multi-channel approach. The activation was pushed by owned, earned and paid media: social channels, IKEA.nl, direct mailings, blogs, shares, online news-items, social advertising, and bloggers. Making this a fully integrated 360 degree campaign. The result video was shared with the target audience. This video was released in an PR mailing and off course on the IKEA social channels.

In total 987 boards were created by the fans, generating 20.683 re-pins resulting in 1.3 million total views. An awesome number for the Netherlands! We gained 20% new followers on Pinterest. And due to the omni-channel approach during the actual activation we reached 6.5 million people via our social platforms, blogs and all other media. The video we created afterwards, which showed everything from the start of the activation to the realization of the room, reached another 3.5 million people.

With the activation we generated a lot of buzz around the catalogue launch and activated the many people to actively engage with the brands new content. All new visuals spread on rapidly on Pinterest and all focus was on the bedroom and the bathroom.

IKEA internal result: due to large attention within IKEA globally the IKEA colleagues in Belgium are copying the activation in their country at the moment.