2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

By proving that living more sustainably didn’t need to consist of grand gestures. IKEA wanted to show that making an impact on the environment could be easy, lighthearted, and something you could do every day. What was meant to be an educational campaign about sustainability ended up positioning IKEA as a leading sustainable brand.

Background

Globally, IKEA committed to becoming a fully sustainable brand by 2030. While this sets the brand apart in most European and American markets, we noticed that sustainability wasn’t crucial for our local audiences. Most people still believed that sustainability meant making a grand gesture for the environment or drastically changing one’s lifestyle. They associated sustainable living with activism and felt daunted by it. As a result, people in the region preferred to ignore the problem instead. IKEA believed that everyday sustainability could be more impactful, requiring teaching first. Therefore, we were tasked with an educational campaign to talk about the importance of being sustainable every day. And they wanted to do so on Earth Day.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

We live in a sound-off, social-first world where grabbing people’s attention has become extremely difficult. While our audience spends a lot of time on social media platforms, we found that they avoided posts about climate change’s adverse effects. They had grown desensitized to shocking images of burning forests, dying animals, and melting icebergs. They simply did not engage and would scroll past most sustainability posts to keep watching their entertainment. If our message was the same, we knew we would be ignored. We needed to find a new way to resonate with our audiences. One that would grab their attention and make them smile before landing our message.

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

Our research found that Polar Bears have become somewhat of a sustainability mascot. When people saw images of the animal, sustainability was the first thing they thought about, regardless of context. That’s when we decided that making the polar bear the hero of our educational film would get the message across in an easy yet clutter-breaking way. We needed the content to be lighthearted and surprising. Instead of putting Polar Bears where people were used to seeing them – we placed them in an unusual context; at home.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

The film tells the story of a regular family - a mother, father, and child. Except, the mother is an eco-conscious bear. We follow a day in their lives and see the mother’s quest to show her family how to live in a way that does not harm nature. Things like shutting the tap when brushing your teeth and using LED bulbs to save energy. The situations were surreal and comical, but at the same time, they felt genuine – building an immediate connection with the audience. Obviously, she’s not always a pleasure to be around - for example she stands in front of the TV as the father and son try to watch football. Mama bear may come off as annoying sometimes but it’s best we all listen to her. It’s what nature would do if nature were you.

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

This started as an educational Earth Day campaign simply meant to raise awareness about the importance of sustainable living at home. Despite meager media investment over a short period, the campaign led to some impressive results. We reached 2.5 Million people with 1.4 Million views. We also drove interest in IKEA’s sustainability range by increasing website visits and page clicks by 10%. While it wasn’t our goal, we also increased sales of our sustainability range by 9%. Most importantly, this set the tone for IKEA’s sustainability agenda and positioned the brand as a leader in sustainability.

Please tell us how the brand purpose inspired the work

IKEA is a democratic brand that wants to be universal as possible. Our purpose is ‘to create a better everyday life for the many people.’ Therefore, our sustainability campaign needed to feel as inclusive and accessible as possible. Its tone is to be optimistic lighthearted with the right hint of humour. In short, instead of grand gestures, the IKEA way meant showing that being sustainable and saving the planet was something everyone could easily do.