2021 Social & Influencer

THE GLASS OF TRUTH

TitleTHE GLASS OF TRUTH
BrandIKEA
Product/ServiceIKEA
Category B02. Real-time Response
Entrant THE SMARTS Sofia, BULGARIA
Idea Creation THE SMARTS Sofia, BULGARIA
Production THE SMARTS Sofia, BULGARIA
Credits
Name Company Position
Pavlina Boneva The Smarts Creative Director
Georgi Zlatkov The Smarts Creative Director
Kaloyan Antonov The Smarts Copywriter
Nikolay Malinov The Smarts Graphic Designer
Zhana Dakovska The Smarts Account Director

Why is this work relevant for Social & Influencer?

IKEA responded to a cultural event - the Bulgarian participation in the Venice Biennale. The reason was a striking resemblance between the glasses, used in the Bulgarian pavilion in Venice, and one of the iconic products in IKEA - the POKAL glass. The "exhibition" of IKEA's glasses became viral in social media and even lead to the revealing of a huge scandal in the country.

Background

Bulgaria participated in Venice Biennale with a strange art installation of 80 water glasses. IKEA realized that those glasses look strikingly similar to its POKAL glass. The cost of the installation, paid by the Ministry of Culture, was 250 000 EUR. The price of a POKAL glass is 1.00 EUR. IKEA could not resist this challenge.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

IKEA decided to respond to that strange resemblance with a provoking poster, promoting an exhibition just like the one in Venice. But not so far away. And much cheaper.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Bulgarians are used to the strong social response of IKEA on many important issues. So a smart single IKEA poster becomes viral in hours. In the case with the POKAL glass the storm was even higher - it jumped from the social media channels shares to all big media in the country.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We just promoted an "exhibition" of our simple POKAL glasses with a poster in the store and shared it on social media. Soon it became viral, jumped out of social media channels and appeared on 5 TV stations, 13 websites and 2 newspapers. Finally, the glass itself landed in the Parliament.

List the results (30% of vote)

Once again IKEA was a responsible brand, revealing truths about Bulgarian reality. The scandal about our Venice Biennale Pavilion was provoked by one small IKEA ad and revealed signs of many wrong practices. In addition to that - the glass appeared on 5 TV channels, 13 websites and 2 newspapers. IKEA earned media for 75 000 EUR (in comparison - the whole IKEA budget for social media is 6000 EUR).