The campaign aimed to generate positive headlines for IKEA during a period dominated by negative news regarding supply issues, COVID-19, and out-of-stock products.

Despite the common trend of delaying childbirth during times of crisis, the pandemic proved to be an exception in Norway. With lockdowns and quarantines confining couples to their homes, the lack of distractions and abundance of time resulted in a surge of baby-making.

The idea to launch The Name Catalogue, which helps expecting parents with baby names based on IKEA products, became a hot PR topic – reflecting positively on the renowned furnishing company.

Situation:

In the aftermath of the pandemic, IKEA has seen both a lack of raw materials and challenges with delivery times, which made it harder to advertise the products.

Brief:

The brief was to demonstrate that IKEA remains relevant despite the ongoing challenge of 'out of stock' products. Our brief was to develop all the creative ourselves, with the work not based on anything IKEA has done previously.

Objectives:

Prove that IKEA knows "life at home" for the many people.

Norway experienced a baby boom in 2021, with almost 3,000 more children born than the previous year, representing a 5.5% increase. This insight gave birth to the creation of a new service aimed at helping soon-to-be parents find a unique baby name – a process that data shows can be extremely challenging.

Drawing on more than 70 years of experience in naming products, we looked through over 15,000 pages of old catalogues to gather more than 800 distinctive baby names.

The result is The Name Catalogue, a comprehensive physical and digital name bank.

Our PR department sent out press releases nationally and internationally, highlighting the essence of the campaign with the key message: "BABY BOOM" after "COVID-19", and that "IKEA is here to help". These words stood out in the crowded mailboxes of news reporters, resulting in our campaign becoming a hot topic in various newspapers, talk shows, and other media outlets.

The campaign was also tailored to reach our target audience through a multi-channel approach. To effectively target our core audience, we directed all of our ads and messaging directly to consumers in the 'baby-making phase', targeting those of the right age, interests, location, and more.

The PR was implemented at the same time as the multi-channel launch of the campaign. Our goal was to create as much buzz and excitement around the Name Catalogue as possible, launching the product with a PR "BOOM"!

The campaign generated over 50 million media impressions, a number ten times larger than the population of Norway. It garnered attention from major news outlets and publications around the world, as well as popular talk shows.

The campaign attracted over 70,000 unique visitors to ikea.no, with an average time spent of 1 minute and 18 seconds. That's a total of 1,330,000 minutes or 22,167 hours spent searching for the perfect name for a child (source: IKEA Norway).

The click-through rate on IKEA's newsletter was more than 85%, surpassing the performance of previous IKEA campaigns in Norway.

In addition to positive feedback, the campaign sparked a debate on how to choose the right name, with multiple radio stations and podcasts discussing the topic. The program Ukeslutt on NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Cooperation) even invited a name researcher for an exclusive interview.