Client: IKEA USA
Campaign: April Fool’s Day: Bïgland
Agency: Brownstein Group
Role: Social Media & Digital Content Supervisor
Live: April 2017

Each year, IKEA USA seeks to create an April Fool’s Day joke that highlights an IKEA icon and brings a smile to the faces of IKEA FAMILY members and new shoppers, alike. The challenge in 2017 was no different, but the results were. With IKEA USA, there’s a false familiarity – a sense that IKEA is cheap and only for the just-out-of-college crowd – so we decided to tap into some of the more well-known stereotypes about the brand for our prank.

To IKEA, children are the most important people in the world – that’s why they created Småland, an in-store space where little ones can play and the whole family is welcome. So we wondered, what if there was a free play area for adults? On April 1, we offered IKEA FAMILY members a sneak peek at Bïgland, a place where adults can relax, blow off some steam, and let their inner child run free. We invited them to have a drink at the Skål bar (it means “cheers” in Swedish!), release some tension at the Swedish massage center, and even resolve home furnishing disputes (which IKEA’s been known to cause from time to time) at an arbitration station.

Though this initiative was social-led, we decided to make it bigger than ever before by extending it to other communications channels, including a landing page and emails to complement the effort. Compared to all other organic social content that year, the organic prank earned 800% more shares on Facebook, 260% more engagement on Twitter, and 255% more comments on Instagram (most of which helped to spread the news to others). The advertising trades picked it up, too – generating more than 11.5 million earned media impressions for the joke. But what was, perhaps, most impressive was the fact that in-store sales spiked in the week following this prank with no other reason why.

This joke was a finalist in the “Best Social Stunt Category” in The Drum’s Social Buzz Awards.