Bulgaria participated in Venice Biennale with a strange art installation of 80 water glasses. IKEA realized that those glasses look strikingly similar to its POKAL glass. The cost of the installation, paid by the Ministry of Culture, was 250 000 EUR. The price of a POKAL glass is 1.00 EUR. IKEA could not resist this challenge.

IKEA decided to respond to that strange resemblance with a provoking poster, promoting an exhibition just like the one in Venice. But not so far away. And much cheaper.

Bulgarians are used to the strong social response of IKEA on many important issues. So a smart single IKEA poster becomes viral in hours. In the case with the POKAL glass the storm was even higher - it jumped from the social media channels shares to all big media in the country.

We just promoted an "exhibition" of our simple POKAL glasses with a poster in the store and shared it on social media.

Once again IKEA was a responsible brand, revealing truths about Bulgarian reality. The scandal about our Venice Biennale Pavilion was provoked by one small IKEA ad and revealed signs of many wrong practices. In addition to that - the glass appeared on 5 TV channels, 13 websites and 2 newspapers. IKEA earned media for 75 000 EUR (in comparison - the whole IKEA budget for social media is 6000 EUR).