It’s been 50 years since IKEA spread its wings from Sweden to Australia’s sunny shores. “It’s a big moment,” Olly Taylor, Havas’s chief strategy officer, reflected, who first worked on an IKEA campaign 15 years ago and told B&T he had been struck with the brand’s consistency since. That consistency and the emotional connection Aussies felt with the brand were key to crafting a 50th anniversary campaign that resonated. B&T sat down with Taylor and Kirsten Hasler, IKEA’s head of marketing, to chat all things meatball pies and FLIP FLÖPS.
“IKEA is one of the most recognisable and loved brands in the world, and that’s because of the consistency of the IKEA concept. We knew there were elements we needed to keep consistent, but we also wanted it to feel uniquely Australian,” Hasler said, a two-time B&T CMO Power List inductee said.
“IKEA is the brand that, over my career, has had the clearest idea and understanding of itself. That just doesn’t happen with most brands anymore,” Taylor said.
That’s where the meatball pies and FLIP FLÖPS come in; distinctly IKEA, no doubt about it, yet fitting seamlessly into Aussie culture.
“The flip flops and the meatball pies were a really fun way to combine Australian and Swedish cultural values. We saw a huge opportunity there to create some attention makers and integrate them into our campaign,” Hasler said.
“They capture IKEA’s personality, which is simple, playful and inclusive. These are the three things we always include in our briefs,” she added.
The anniversary campaign goes beyond the TVC, with meatball pies and FLIP FLÖPS available in-store.
Consistency Over ‘Difference For The Sake Of It’
When rebrands seem to be everywhere, not changing much may almost seem risky. But that was exactly the strategy Hasler and Taylor went with to craft the campaign.
Consistency and authenticity resonate with customers better than major transformations and constant rebrands, they reflected.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a brand with a gap of 15 years and see that the true tenets of the brand are absolutely the same and consistent. You often get a change in brand strategy and tone. It doesn’t mean the brand isn’t dynamic and doesn’t evolve and change, but its role has remained unchanged,” Taylor said.
“There is a real temptation in creating brand campaigns to do something different for the sake of getting attention. For this campaign, we deliberately leaned into the things that people know and love about IKEA because it would be more effective. We leant into hot dogs, Allen keys and meatballs, things that sparked nostalgia and tapped into memory structures,” Hasler added.
Bridging Two Cultures
“It’s a big moment to celebrate 50 years in the country. There is a tendency for brands to look back and celebrate the milestones. We made the decision not to make it a retrospective. It’s all about continuing to help everyday people through pivotal life moments; that’s what IKEA values,” Taylor said.
“The campaign showed that in a uniquely Australian way. You bust your thong, things go wrong, but it’s all about friends helping each other out through those times,” he added.
To craft the campaign, the team conducted research with IKEA customers and staff, which showed a strong emotive response and people drawn to the brand’s playful spirit.
“The research showed that people see it as a Swedish brand, but the way they talk about it is in direct relation to their own lives. It was an opportunity to connect with how Australians feel and think about IKEA. We were astounded by the relationship people have with the brand. People were grateful to the brand for changing their living spaces. It was quite an emotive response,” Taylor said.
“In many ways, IKEA’s Swedish values and Australian values are similar in that they are egalitarian, they’re about helping the everyday person,” Taylor added.
Many IKEA staff had met their partners at IKEA, and had family members working there. Hasler and Taylor came to see a network of people connected with the global brand, and they knew they had to capture that.
For the second year running, IKEA conducted a ‘Life at Home’ report, which captures lifestyle choices and habits of everyday Aussies to tap into the culture. “It’s based on comprehensive ethnographic research that we do, where we go into people’s homes and spend an hour with them and just talk to them about the dreams for their home and the barriers to getting there. It informs our pricing to marketing and communications to campaign strategy,” Hasler said.
“We really believe that because we started from the place of consumer research and developed the strategy around that, it resonates with Australians so much. The creative testing we did with System1 went better than any other brand campaign, locally or globally,” Hasler added.
In fact, the campaign hardly changed from when it was tested with System1, which the IKEA and Havas teams attributed to their “strong values alignment”.
Leaning into what people know and love in a world that seems to be constantly shifting is something marketers should keep in mind.
