IKEA’s innovative new campaign is good – but doesn’t go far enough

IKEA have recently launched their ‘Go Happy To Bed’ campaign – which focuses on an integration of Facebook Connect with YouTube.

After a short introductory video, the campaign asks to connect with your Facebook account, and then asks who you share your bedroom with, along with a few other bits of personal info. After a short period where your room is ‘built’ from comments from your Facebook Wall, another long video runs.It shows your new bedroom – including photos taken from your Facebook Wall and added to your Bedroom Wall, and (rather spookily) namechecks you as well.

Once the video finishes, you get an image of your perfect room, with various IKEA products highlighted to click on. You can then either ‘share the room’ on Facebook/Twitter or print off your full shopping list.It’s a good gimmick, but there’s probably more IKEA could have done here. A few things it might be good to add:

1) Integrate your Facebook activity better – perhaps you mention that you need a new lamp, or want a bigger bed? I can’t tell whether any info like that is integrated into this new room. If it is, then the impact is lessened by not letting me know. If it’s not, why not?

2) Personalise better – The videos aren’t really enormously personalised, and probably could involve a little more tailored footage. All I spotted was that a) I have a double bed and b) There are photos of me on the wall. This leads on to…

3) Use social media better: One way to better personalise my room is to include some evidence of the girlfriend I’ve just told IKEA I live with. There’s an added benefit here – once I say I share my room, why doesn’t IKEA request they connect to the room, too? That way not only do I get a more personalised room, but IKEA get another potential customer viewing and engaging with the campaign…

So I’d probably give this campaign a 6 out of 10. It’s a very cool little gimmick, but the social integration does seem only skin-deep at this stage.

Hat Tip – Digital Buzz Blog

*To be honest, one reason why not is that there probably aren’t that many people out there who decide to share with the world their need for a new duvet.

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http://twitter.com/bsmithusm Brian S.

Cool little campaign, but I must agree with Nick, Ikea could have gone way more social here. This could have been a great campaign for launching a new Facebook Store, for example, to put a social commerce element into the equation. Ikea is linking the products displayed in your new room to their ecommerce site, but upon clicking the links of products I’d consider purchasing through their ecommerce store, I found no consumer reviews on any of the products Ikea offered to me. I also have no way of sharing products I’m considering buying from their site with my friends via social media, which takes out the element of social shopping (2 advantages to selling on Facebook). Having their consumers share their room via social media is great for getting others to partake in this experience as evidenced by the massive engagement this video is generating via youtube. But printing out a shopping list of the new items in your room isn’t exactly the most social trend- It’s highly unlikely I’ll be asking each of my 1,000 Facebook friend to come shop with me at my local Ikea…
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