Price-war messaging is rampant amongst retail brands looking to win amongst students preparing to head back to college. To win with these consumers IKEA needed to breakthrough this noise by elevating the brand beyond just affordability, IKEA needed to connect with them on the attributes that matter most to them – unique styles and personalization for their college space. Content was key to showcasing these attributes; however, when users are barraged by 6-second videos, 2-second snaps, and posts from countless sources across feeds, the bar was high to earn the attention needed to demonstrate those attributes. To overcome this, IKEA leveraged its understanding of where and how consumers are spending their time to create an innovative and distinctly IKEA approach that not only captured their attention with prolonged engagement, but earned their love for the brand. The campaign sought to cement IKEA within the minds of Millennial college-aged consumers as the stylish and innovative go-to for all their furniture and furnishing needs.
- We focused on three audience insights to inform our approach; Snapchat is their preferred platform to communicate, they trust influencers more than almost any other voice, and they want control in the experiences they have with brands.
- We had to crack the code in how to leverage influencers to build the brand, on a platform where the time spent benchmark is 3 seconds.
- This led to a never-been-done interactive video on Snapchat, featuring influencers as the talent. To do this, IKEA became a matchmaker, introducing Snapchat, Fullscreen and technology partner Eko to each other for the first time – a power partnership.
- We carefully selected influencer duo Superfruit (beloved members of Pentatonix) as our talent. Mitch and Scott were real life roommates which delivered the authenticity IKEA's audience demanded. They also had very different style preferences which allowed IKEA to organically demonstrate different style and personalization options. Superfruit led viewers through an interactive adventure where the narrative seamlessly changed as users selected choices. The setting was an IKEA dorm room, allowing IKEA's solutions to shine through an entertaining storyline of relatable roommate scenarios.
- The content was promoted across the platform through Snap Ads to the college audience demographic as well as distributed through owned brand channels.
The video bucked the time spent trend with brands on Snapchat, with users spending over 80 seconds with the video. Word quickly spread of the content beyond Snapchat, leading users to deliberately try to get the ad served to them on Snapchat, while others created video string-outs and other original content inspired by the ad. This user generated content delivered an incremental 70,000 earned views for the IKEA story. While Superfruit helped IKEA earn attention, users frequently called out IKEA directly and solutions and styles shown. Furthermore, the program has shifted how Snapchat views the role of influencers in brand marketing, and has sparked discussions between Snapchat and Eko for broader a partnership.
