How Ikea gained cultural credibility with a towel

The brief is to look for places where Ikea can capitalize on culture and deliver its 'style, democratised' message. One way to do that is poking fun at the out-of-reach world of luxury. For example, Harry Styles wore a suit that resembled an Ikea duvet and Game of Thrones used Ikea sheepskin rugs in the HBO series.

Hope & Glory spots them, reacts to them and uses social channels to fuel the fire before taking the conversation to social-first and mainstream media. The strategy gives the opportunity to show the brand’s witty side and keeps it part of the cultural fabric.

Brief

Some ideas take months to develop, refine and deliver. Some take a moment of inspiration on the tube and two hours to turn around. This campaign was the latter. The team spotted Balenciaga’s 'Towel Skirt' when it hit the brand’s Instagram page. What was essentially a towel with a zip, retailed for £695 when Ikea sold its Vinarn towels for £16.

Nipping out to the Hammersmith store, scooping up some sunnies, a hoodie and some combat pants along the way. Within an hour the team had a set of photos for the brand’s Instagram channels ready to go. The UK post immediately caught fire.

Fashion Instagram and fashion TikTok took up the story by congratulating Ikea's trolling of the luxury brand. As the story went global the images were posted across Ikea local country pages. Within 24 hours comments on the story hit over 50 million views on TikTok alone. At the same time, the story spread across X with over 50,000 posts and 27 million impressions 24 hours after the Ikea image hit its social channels.

From there the agency took the story to editorial titles to push the story into the social-first that we knew would reach our audience, drive reach and spark further conversation. The stunt got a clean sweep of the biggest culture titles including Hunger, BoredPanda, Hypebeast, Culted, Complex, High Snobiety, Dazed, Drip, I Deserve Couture, Pause. There were over 250,000 engagements across social publishers’ Instagram alone.

Overall there were just shy of 1000 pieces of editorial with accompanying social shares across media titles’ platforms. Highlights included Harpers, Vogue, The Telegraph, Indy100 and GQ. Reaching 900 million people with those editorial articles being shared over 2,000 times.

Results

The post on @IKEAUK Instagram became the brand’s most successful ever. There were 49,900 engagements, it was saved over 3,000 times and reached over 655,000 unique users on the platform. There were over 100 posts about the campaign across TikTok as users praised Ikea’s response. Tracked posts were viewed 32 million times generating over 2.6 million engagements. Reach was more than 15 million across the network.

On Instagram there were over 140 posts sharing Ikea’s 'beef' with posts from RAP, Complex, Hypebeast, Clips, Gossiproomoff, Worldly.IT and more. It reached over 25 million accounts across the network and delivered over 1.03 million engagements. Overall the campaign provoked 60,000+ posts with zero media spend or influencer fees. Reaching over 40 million unique users across social and over 5.7 million engagements.

The research discovered that 57% of our GenZ UK consumer audience saw the campaign and 87% said it improved their impression of the brand. Although not a critical objective for this culture activity, searches for the towel rose 98% daily on the UK website for the week following the campaign.

Ready to get your work recognized on a global stage? Enter The Drum Awards today. Need more inspiration, read our Award Winning Case Studies.