IKEA throws in a towel
Agency: Hope&Glory
It is fair to say that creative agency Hope&Glory has had some fun with its client IKEA over the years. With a brief to retain IKEA’s big brand status, the agency deploys a mix of simple, playful and inclusive ideas to keep it uppermost in consumers’ minds.
Who can forget instructions on how to reconfigure LUDDE rugs into Game of Thrones’ costumes, after discovering that’s what costume designers on the show used? Or its advice on how to identify an original FRAKTA bag (its iconic shopping tote) after luxury fashion house Balenciaga started selling an almost identical bag for £1,600?
And so it is no surprise that when Balenciaga debuted a towel skirt (a unisex style made from grey terry towel, dry-clean only and just £695!), the team leapt into action. Within minutes of spotting the fashion, co-founder James Gordon-Macintosh shared the image from Balenciaga’s Instagram account on the agency’s Slack channel.
Just two hours later, a colleague responded that they ‘were pretty sure’ they could recreate the look at IKEA’s Hammersmith branch with a £16 VINARN towel. Picking up a pair of sunglasses, hoodie and combat trousers along the way, the ‘dupe’ was photographed and up on IKEA’s local country Instagram pages within the hour.
The images were swiftly spotted, and key influencers on fashion Instagram and fashion TikTok shared the story, congratulating IKEA on ‘trolling’ Balenciaga. Within 24 hours, there had been more than 50 million comments on TikTok alone. Achieving viral success on these social channels was particularly important for IKEA as they are Gen-Z favourites, a target audience for the Swedish brand.
But the story was going simultaneously wild on X, formerly known as Twitter, with more than 50,000 posts and 27 million impressions in the first 24 hours.
Hope&Glory then targeted social publishers, such as Hunger, BoredPanda, Hypebeast, High Snobiety and Dazed, achieving more than 250,000 engagements across their Instagram accounts. Unsurprisingly, the story was also picked up by traditional media titles, such as Vogue, Harpers, GQ and the Daily Telegraph.
In total, there were almost 1,000 pieces of editorial while the post on @IKEAUK Instagram became the brand’s most successful ever, with 49,900 engagements. In fact, the campaign provoked more than 60,000 posts with zero media spend or influencer fees. As low budget campaigns go, this cost around £1,000.
Research found that 57% of a Gen-Z UK consumer audience saw the campaign while 87% said it improved their impression of the brand. And, while not an objective, searches for the VINARN towel rose 98% daily on the UK website for a week after the campaign.
The judges ‘loved’ this campaign, describing it as ‘funny, clever and on brand for IKEA’. In fact, they said: ‘For £1,000, it’s genius.’