Swedish furniture giant IKEA wanted a creative campaign to promote the opening of their new store in Malmo, Switzerland. According to this article on CNET.com, they also wanted to save a little bit of cash. So, they hired ad agency Forsman and Bodenfors to create a promotional campaign using Facebook.
In the beginning, the campaign seemed like just another somewhat bland attempt to use Facebook to connect with customers. The store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, “created” a Facebook profile (actually, the ad agency created it for him). He began posting pictures of the showrooms at his new store.Then, IKEA announced a contest-the first person to tag their name to a product in the showroom pictures would win that product.
Naturally, people began to tag themselves in pictures. This pushed the pictures, and the contest, into their friends’ newsfeeds. The promotion went viral, and soon thousands of Swedish IKEA fans had flocked to the Facebook page. The campaign successfully raised the profile of not only the new store, but also the IKEA brand as a whole.
Of course, as commenters on the CNET article were quick to point out, IKEA’S contest does not comply with Facebook’s new guidelines for promotions. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no lessons to be learned from the campaign. First of all, IKEA’s campaign illustrates how powerful social media can be when it comes to spreading the word about your company. Because the contest was built around Facebook’s tagging feature, users “told” their friends about the contest just by entering it, since tagging themselves put the picture and the contest details into their friends’ newsfeeds. If you are trying to create a viral marketing campaign, capitalizing on social networking features like this will help ensure your message gets the maximum amount of exposure.
Many people also made a conscious decision to share the contest with friends via their Facebook walls. Creative, fun campaigns like this entice people to share. And, of course, so does the opportunity to get something for free, get a discount or win prizes.
At Dukky, we integrate social media with your direct response campaigns in order to increase overall performance and improve the customer experience. People like sharing discounts and freebies. Plus, your offers can be shared on any social network without you having to run a Facebook promotion, with all of the time and money that the new regulations entail.
