Smart: Ikea’s Latest Campaign Recreates ‘Simpsons’, ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Friends’ Living Rooms

Ikea’s latest ad campaign in the United Arab Emirates is an absolute winner. It hits your nostalgia buttons, is steeped in pop culture and provides the home products retail giant with a powerful marketing vehicle sure to keep its brand top-of-mind with consumers.

I’d call it a near-perfect campaign

Working with Publicis Spain, Ikea has designed a set of displays modelled after three of television’s most iconic living rooms. The “Real Life Series” campaignOpens a new window uses Ikea’s 3D software to recreate the living rooms from The Simpsons, Friends and Stranger Things using actual furniture from the store’s inventory.

The ads show consumers they can buy Monica Geller’s curtains in ‘Friends’ for 145 dirhams ($40) or Joyce Byers’s coffee table from Stranger Things for 590 dirhams ($160).

The brand’s social media channels will, of course, run with the initiative, no doubt hoping they have a viral sensation on their hands. That the displays will physically appear in a live event in the Middle East will likely help.

To aid the campaign, Ikea also launched a website with decoration suggestions, advice and inspiration based on pieces from the displays, and will complement the site with print and digital ads and feature them in various catalogues.

Ultimately, Ikea wants to prove to consumers in the region that it can offer “relevant solutions to all cultures.”

The company says the project is especially designed to showcase its range of products to the UAE’s diverse expat community by drawing clear parallels between its catalogue and settings already familiar (and seductive) to consumers.

I find it impressively smart to call on pop culture phenomena that have transcended culture and language through TV and laptop screens.

The power of the screen

It’s an evolution in marketing. Consider the success of New Zealand, Croatia and Iceland in developing “screen tourism.”

New Zealand’s tourism board consistently publicizes that its majestic countryside served as the setting for much of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as The Hobbit. ROI on that campaign? Since the films, New Zealand has experienced a 50% increase in arrivals.

Similarly, Croatia and Iceland, among others, have profited from Game of Thrones tourismOpens a new window as fans of the popular TV show flock to discover these countries after enjoying their beauty as broadcast.

These countries took advantage of an opportunity to transform popular culture hits into advertising vehicles. These franchises have been viewed by millions of people, create massive numbers of dedicated and loyal fans and, most importantly, highlight the visceral appeal of those nations’ landscapes.

The best aspect of “screen tourism” is that the hard part is already done — the audience has been captured.

The major difference — and the genius of the campaign — with the “Real Life Series” is that the TV hits have no real connection to Ikea’s brand. Rather, Ikea has has credibly created that connection for audiences.

Moreover, it’s found a unique way to spotlight the breadth of Ikea’s product range without making the products the focus of the ads.

The star, if you will, is the image of all those products together: the recognizable TV-show living room that automatically makes you feel warm inside, bringing to mind the TV show itself, and triggering your nostalgia.

Pop culture’s added value

Companies have long leveraged pop culture for their marketing purposes.

When advertisers use relevant pop culture to shape a campaign, the benefit to the brand can be significant. Those ads carry extra “oomph” because the audience can relate at just the right moment

The pop culture link also makes them more memorable and far more likely to be spread by word of mouth — and on social media.

Playing off pop culture, however, can be dangerous. Get the tone wrong, or deliver a distasteful message, and brands can face nasty backlash.

A now-infamous example of getting it wrong: Pepsi’s 2017 ad featuring Kylie Jenner, which had to be pulled within 24 hours of airing in the midst of a public outcry that the commercial trivialized sensitive social causes such as Black Lives Matter, appropriating them to sell soda.

Similarly, when Carrie Fisher died unexpectedly in December 2016, Cinnabon sought to join the public and corporate outpouring of condolences on social media. On Twitter, the bakery chain posted an image of Princess Leia drawn in a cinnamon outline and with a Cinnabon in her hair. While some people argued that the eccentric Fisher would have laughed, most internet audiences were incensed.

On the other hand, though, when marketers get it right — as Nike did with its sponsorship of Colin KaepernickOpens a new window — the positive potential is huge.

To get that campaign right, Nike likely invested time planning, strategizing and testing the message before going live. The marketing team presumably dedicated time and resources to ensuring the tone, delivery and response to the public’s reaction were on brand.

For Ikea’s campaign, a substantial amount of planning was also necessary. As Ann-Christine Diaz writes in AdAge, “The production was an arduous, months-long process during which the Ikea and agency teams worked together, sifting through thousands of items from the Ikea catalog and site that would work as stand-ins.”

Even the selection process of deciding which living rooms to recreate was a complicated process as they “had to represent the whole spectrum of entertainment, yet be iconic.”

In other words, marketers shouldn’t simply try to capitalize on pop culture for the sake of it. But get it right and reap the rewards.