IKEA RESPONDS TO BALENCIAGA

Silver Eurobest

Case Film

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TitleIKEA RESPONDS TO BALENCIAGA
BrandIKEA
Product/ServiceFRAKTA BAG
Category C04. Real-Time Response
Entrant ACNE Stockholm, SWEDEN
Idea Creation IKEA Malmö, SWEDEN
Credits
Name Company Position
Johan Holmgren ACNE Creative Director
Morten Kjaer Ikea Creative Hub Creative Director
Tiago Pinho ACNE Art Director
Isaac Bonnier ACNE Art Director
Joel Lindblad ACNE Copywriter
David Aronson ACNE Copywriter
Lovisa Friman Bendz ACNE Account Director
Anders Kylberg ACNE Photographer
Louice Alvarson Ikea Creative Hub Assignment Leader
Simone Page IKEA Client
Ori Mace ACNE Managing Director
Josef Holmgren ACNE Film Editor
Simon Saarinen ACNE Motion Designer

The Campaign

IKEA’s blue plastic bag, FRAKTA is used by millions of people and part of popular culture. A statement demonstrated when social media drew attention to big similarities between it and the one from Balenciaga. We decided to flirt back with an instant response to the discussion taking place online. Playing the role of original designer and innovator of big blue totes, we released a guide on how to identify an original FRAKTA bag and jumped right into the conversation.

Creative Execution

The possibility to carry out this work was identified on Thursday, April 20, 2017. The work was produced during the morning of Friday 21st and it was sent to the Ikea markets the same day. As IKEA usually works, the material was distributed to all IKEA markets and it was their own decision to work with the material as they pleased. Some of the markets posted it on their website, others posted it on social media. The ad went viral the week after.

Results

• Unique media impressions: 1.04 billion • Earned media: $ 10.8 milliom • Interactions: 1 294 235 • Media budget: 0. The IKEA-Balenciaga-Handbag became a twitter phenomenon: 97% of the whole buzz happened on Twitter, mostly by retweets. Highlights: A post from PILASACI, “IKEA respond to Balenciaga‘s $2,145 rendition of their $0.90 Frakta Bag”, reaches more than 24k retweets. A selection of news articles that were shared in social media (total shares): adweek (88.7k), boredpanda (86,6k), dailybest.it (58,7k), demotivateur.fr (33,1k), Mashable (35,6k) The post was picked up by a wide range of different media: Vogue, The Guardian, NY Times, Fast Company, The Independent, High Snobiety, most viewed article on Dazed, Adweek, Mashable, Pick Of The Day Creativity, Creative Review, Huffington, Grazia, Harpers Bazaar, Hypebeast, Teen Vogue, Architectural digest, Fortune, Elle, Marie Claire, iD, Daily Mail, Trendhunter. According to the client, Ikea, this is the most successful ad in Ikea's history.

This response ad was not only produced specifically for social media, but also thanks to it. The conversation we wanted to take part of was already taking place. As one of the story’s protagonists we knew we wanted to contribute with our point of view. Our ad shows what advertising can be in a social media driven landscape: a place for honest and engaging conversations where brands can stand side by side with their audience. We made consumers not only engage with our brand but also with each other as individuals by sharing, tagging and commenting.

From a strategical point of view our target group are the people involved in the discussion in various media. It was not us who drew the initial similarities between these two bags but these individuals themselves, meaning they already had a relation to IKEA to start with. In its turn making them a great and diverse group of people to tap into with our response. Our approach was inspired by the pop culture practice of identifying counterfeits – such as pattern-checking on a Louis Vuitton bag. The aim was to naturally extend an already organic discussion without saying neither yay or nay. The ad combined fashion’s visual language with the layout and style of social media based humor formats to stay relevant to the platform.