IKEA delivers ‘The Wonderful Everyday’ for millions, so doing this sustainably is becoming increasingly important. The financial (and PR) cost of saying this in the wrong way is huge, so we needed to articulate IKEA’s green credentials authentically – giving customers a way to engage. And we couldn’t forget the need for a commercial payoff. So we had to get consumers spending. Without encouraging spending.

We launched IKEA’s first ever totally free collection, the ‘Live Lagom’ £0 range. Instead of buying new, we encouraged customers to re-purpose what they had; creating a range that made no commercial sense for a retailer, and perfect sense for the consumer.

While momentum for the campaign grew, the counter-intuitive positioning engaged consumers commercially too – leading to an additional 17.8k store visits, and 34% of transactions driven from the campaign containing a ‘sustainable’ item. In total, our campaign resulted in £2.25m of incremental sales.

We created and launched the ‘Live Lagom’ £0 range, IKEA’s first ever totally free collection.

Lagom in Swedish means ‘the right amount’ so instead of buying new, we encouraged customers to turn an existing item into something new.

We targeted communities interested in sustainability, then built momentum across social/PR with in-store co-worker how-to’s for IGTV. The communities, inspired, created their own products, which we replayed in digital channels, helping reach those harder to engage with using just IKEA’s voice.

We gathered these products to create a new version of an IKEA classic; the Lagom Catalogue. Living on Pinterest, this was a focal point for the campaign that we could return to year after year, and an embodiment of our sustainability ethos that no competitor could own. Lastly, we displayed the best ideas in-store as part of an interactive presentation, inspiring consumers to think about how they could be more sustainable.

The biggest barrier to living more sustainably is the perceived low impact of an individual versus high personal cost. We tackled this, taking inspiration from the Live Lagom programme; an IKEA initiative helping local customers learn how to live more sustainably. It encapsulates the IKEA philosophy towards sustainability with small changes undertaken by lots of people, adding up to make a real difference.

It was inherently Swedish, with a ready-made community of early movers, meaning it was authentic and uniquely ownable by IKEA. So, we set about communicating that ethos more widely to activate more of the many and build groundswell for a longer-term movement.

We gave the campaign a home at IKEA.co.uk and drove our audience there with emails, social activity and search – primarily for further inspiration and ideas – where we could then serve relevant, helpful products which also supported a more sustainable life at home.

This was IKEA’s first attempt in the UK to talk about sustainability and was very much a pilot project. The campaign was launched with no ATL media support and was targeted initially at receptive communities online who shared the ‘Lagom’ ethos and through the new Greenwich store in London.

As momentum grew, we paved the way for sharing £0 ideas on a broader scale – starting with the £0 Lagom catalogue being refreshed each year with new UGC ideas. Then empowering people to run Lagom workshops in their own communities, constantly creating and sharing new ideas.

It also addressed the future of the IKEA catalogue. IKEA UK have been moving away from promoting the catalogue for sustainability reasons and were looking to phase it out altogether. By creating a digital, crowd-sourced catalogue we’ve turned the problem into the solution, using the new Lagom catalogue to actively demonstrate our sustainability ethos.

During our campaign, we drove an additional 17.8k store visits. In total, we achieved £2.25m of incremental sales.

Despite not encouraging product purchases specifically, all campaign emails drove incremental spend – and average purchasing

In terms of our audience, we increased the frequency of Advocates by 56% and for Followers, there was a 49% increase in Live LAGOM 2019 applications. Most tellingly, our Passive audience spent £30 more on average per transaction.

At a time when our audience are more critical than ever, and in contrast to other brands, the campaign saw amazing results from social media. Impressions totalled 6.4m and engagement rates reached 38%.