By using a bottom-up approach and listening careful to social channels, we found that Italians are literally prepared to steal to have one copy of the IKEA catalogue: they love it to the point that thousands of them, as soon as it comes out, swipe a copy from their neighbours, colleagues and family members. And what's the best way to dissuade someone from stealing something? By making it totally unappealing! That's why IKEA, for the first time in its history, disguise its catalogue and launch The Changing Catalogue: a quirky collection of fake covers designed to transform the IKEA catalogue into a magazine that nobody would ever steal. Horrible, boring, creepy: these covers are guaranteed to make every catalogue can feel safe and sound.

We've designed a collection of 10 fake covers that mimic real magazines which are actually on sale and cater to the smallest of niche markets. Each cover has its own identity but shares one thing with all the others: truly terrible design! From the choice of subject matter to the graphic design and colour palette, and from the logos and images to the name and the articles and columns: in these 10 covers, everything is absurd and designed to make every IKEA catalogue unstealable. Launched on all the brand's digital and social channels with an ironic and surreal video, the covers were mailed directly to 50,000 IKEA members and to 100 of the top influencers and design bloggers in Italy, downloadable on the brand's official website and distributed to over 360,000 customers in occasion of a series of events in the brand's 21 Italian stores.

Over 625,000 covers downloaded and printed on the brand's official website, which added to over 362,000 covers handed out to customers in stores (and sold out in a week!) and 50,000 covers sent directly to the homes of IKEA members, makes a total of 1,000,000 catalogues saved.

And still: +165% conversations about the IKEA catalogue, +35% site traffic, 30% awareness, 98% likeability.

Articles and mentions on Italian and international websites and in magazines about design, but not only design: from Adweek to Vanity Fair, via Fubiz, DesignTAXI, Not Cot and Wired.

With over 210 million copies printed each year, the IKEA catalogue is the world's most popular and widely distributed publication. Particularly in Italy, where the release of each new edition is always regarded as an extraordinary event and the publication itself is seen as more than just a catalogue, becoming a true object of desire. So, how to launch in Italy the 2017 IKEA catalogue underlining its profile as a real cult?