Mother London

London

The Story of The Wonderful Everyday

In 2013, after 25 years of almost continuous growth, IKEA was facing some tough challenges. The businesses’ rate of growth was starting to decline, and rivals were hot on IKEA’s tail, making it their mission to overtake IKEA’s market leadership as Britain’s biggest homeware retailer. We set out to reverse the decline, re-establish IKEA as the category leader and future proof the business for years to come.

A big challenge required a big step change in our approach to communications. We needed a bold, future-facing point of view on modern life at home; one that could reimagine IKEA’s role and capture hearts and homes in the UK - attracting new shoppers, and encouraging more people to spend across more ranges, more often. We went back to the origins of IKEA itself, to the founding purpose of the business; ‘To better the lives of the many people’.

Full of Swedish Wisdom, The Wonderful Everyday Was Born

The everyday is often seen as boring, and we tend to overlook it in favour of far-off, fleeting celebrations in our calendars. But why? For IKEA, the everyday is the important bit - whether that’s giving you a better night's sleep, clever storage solutions that make more of your home, less arguments and less daily irritations. With this in mind, we rejected seasonal and event-driven marketing in favour of a more continuous, always-on approach.

The Wonderful Everyday platform delivers across a range of products and a depth of channels. It’s an organising idea that influences the entire IKEA business - from brand, to products, store openings and colleagues. It stretches across home themes like sleeping, cooking, playing, storage and celebrates them all in equal measure.

The Wonderful Everyday Seven Years On: Tomorrow Starts Tonight

Our recent IKEA campaign is anchored in the most universally everyday theme of all. Sleep was fast becoming the hottest topic in wellness - and with our home furnishing competitors. IKEA wanted to inspire its customers to sleep better and for longer.

Our challenge: we all claim to love sleep; yet we neglect it nightly, in favour of waking life. Which is ironic, considering the myriad benefits good sleep brings to the waking day - enhancing creativity, athletic performance and health to name just a few. So if we were to change the many’s attitudes and behaviours towards sleep, we needed to show that the more you sleep, the more you get out of life. Enter our campaign: Tomorrow Starts Tonight.

To launch this platform at scale, we created a TVC prequel to Aesop’s classic fable, the Hare & the Tortoise. In this modern reimagining, a great night's sleep is revealed as the secret to Tortoise’s success the next day – while the Hare wastes the night before the big race on (rather relatable) distractions. We also created a suite of provocative OOH to run alongside the TV. This work takes on the life-enhancing promises of industries that we spend time and money chasing –energy drinks, vitamin supplements and anti-ageing- highlighting how the benefits of sleep are proven to deliver the same results (with a whole lot less faff and nonsense).

Creating a Wonderful Tomorrow Together: Fortune Favours the Frugal

In our most recent international campaign for IKEA, we tackle the F-word. Frugal often has negative connotations, but who said it has to mean miserly or unglamorous?! Our new TVC and OOH encourages us to think differently of the benefits of a frugal life and celebrates the small, everyday things we can do to be more environmentally friendly, with the help of IKEA.

The campaign launches against the backdrop of IKEA’s commitment to sustainability, having recently pledged that all products will be made from recycled or regenerative materials by 2030. Last year alone, IKEA introduced a new, plant-based alternative to their iconic meatball, which has just 4% of the classic meatball’s carbon footprint and announced the move to non-alkaline batteries. In January 2021, IKEA launched Buy Back – an initiative that will see stores buy back unwanted IKEA furniture from customers in return for a voucher to spend when they really need something.

Some (wonderful) Results

The Wonderful Everyday has delivered unprecedented growth for IKEA, and is consistently recognised as one of the most effective, creatively awarded and enduring campaigns in the UK.

In the words of IKEA's founder...