Dare To Wear The Ikea Blue Bag Dress?
Like many of you, I’m trying to get beyond the industrialization and unvarying of living that is Ikea. I, like many of you, am an Ikea Hacker wannabe.
Wannabe because I’ll never reach the heights featured in the following story! I’d like you to meet Adriana, a teacher from the Parsons School of Design. Adriana has designed a halter dress from one of those infamous blue Ikea bags! (click through to discover the story and more images!)
A lighting hackea
A simple light hack but one that helps Stefan save energy.
We have a dining room table light (not made by IKEA) which has 5 E14 fitting type bulbs. The original bulbs were 25W a piece, which adds up to 125W total.
Trying to reduce our energy usage I decided to replace with the 5W Sparsam CFL’s. At first it didn’t look too pretty.
The solution was simple: spray-paint them to a matching color and so the label text isn’t visible anymore. The result: energy usage dropped from 125W to 25W. On the last picture you can see lights 1, 2 and 5 have been replaced with the Sparsam bulbs, lights 3 and 4 are original (for comparison purposes).
That’s Mine! My Name’s on It!
Let’s say you sell trendy furniture for family-friendly prices. What’s the best way to push product and spread brand awareness? Well, you could try developing and offering:
A showroom. Pros: People see products in context, and they can buy them right then and there! Cons: You don’t reach potential buyers who aren’t in the store.
A catalog. Pros: Again, people see products in context, and they can view them right in their own homes! Or in a waiting room! Cons: They can’t buy right away. A busy mom might bookmark a couch she likes and forget about it, or just never mail in her order form or call you.
A social-network profile. Pros: Google will index it, and fans will find you. Cons: You have to find ways to engage them once they arrive.
Or, get this: You could combine all three options in an amazing multichannel promo! That’s precisely what IKEA recently did.
In a stellar example of out-of-the-box thinking, IKEA wedded its showroom catalog to Facebook. But it didn’t stop there. It got people to spread the word about the brand to their networks, and peruse the catalog, by promising them an item they wanted for free.
Here’s how: IKEA created a Facebook profile for a store manager, then loaded the account with gorgeous pictures of products, portrayed showroom-style. The first user who tagged his or her name on a given product won it!
On Facebook, when a user is tagged on a photo, that photo automatically appears in the newsfeeds of his or her network. As a result, IKEA got tons of brand exposure with very little legwork—just the investment of a few thousand dollars’ worth of furniture.
What’s more, users who missed out demanded more pictures—meaning the effort raised active interest in the campaign, the product and the give-happy Swedish brand. Check out the demo for a clear pic of how it all panned out.
The Po!nt: Mix and match! Use today’s technology to expand the impact of traditional marketing venues like catalogs and in-store showrooms. Diversify!
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