moon on a leash

IKEA ADS

I love advertisement of all kinds, but I especially love guerrilla ads. It’s in your face creativity that you can’t help but notice, and in most cases, love. It pulls you out of the everyday ordinary and calls your attention to something you would otherwise ignore. So creative and super fun!

Over the years, I’ve noticed IKEA has an incredible collection of guerrilla ads, and in my research to share them with you, I’ve also found that their ad creativity doesn’t stop there. It translates perfectly into print, billboards, and of course, video.

Here’s a selection of some of my favorite IKEA ads, world-wide. Enjoy :)

GUERRILLA ADVERTISING

Paris, France. IKEA attacks the famous Parisian Metro system! If you think that exchanging the benches in one station with their newest line of sofas (pictured below) is exciting enough, you won't believe what they did next... They built multiple apartments (each 581 square feet) in the Auber station to showcase how IKEA furnishing and accessories can make even the smallest of spaces usable and practical. And it doesn't end there! Not only were these apartments beautiful and practical for each passerby to admire, they were also filled with tenants for a week long experiment! This exhibit is currently in place, happening between the 9th and 14th of January 2012. If you're in Paris, go check it out, and if not check out the videos below, and follow the progress and the daily recaps here! LOVE!

Building the apartments...

Day 2 time lapse montage in the apartment

Kobe, Japan. IKEA decorates a Kobe Portliner Monorail for it's April 14, 2008 opening. (Link)

World Wide. This is simply GENIUS! IKEA hosted a series of 92 movie screenings reaching 13,000 viewers in order to advertise their newest catalogue. Why you ask? With their "Cinema Catalogue" technique, flashlights were used to project IKEA products and prices on movies that already featured their designs! Not only did they get an 5,000 catalogues distributed (5x more than anticipated), but they got the pretty faces of hollywood to help with their marketing. Check out the video below!

New York City, USA. In preparation for the Brooklyn opening, IKEA designed a "Studio Apartment in a box" in the streets of Manhattan. (Link)

New York City, USA. "Good Design Can Make The Everyday A Little Better" Campaign. (Link)

Frankfurt, Germany. IKEA hired Ogilvy Frankfurt to redesign the front of an apartment building with giant replicas of IKEA storage boxes and drawers. This design won many awards, including the Yellow Pencil for Environmental Graphics in Graphic Design at the D&AD Awards. (Link)

Milan, Italy. These bus shelter walls were packed with 3D kitchen objects and utensils. At the bottom, IKEA offers organizational suggestions for the mess. (Link)