ikea – Andy Kinsella

Smart campaign by Forsman & Bodenfors to promote a new Ikea store in Malmo, Sweden.

Enjoy the vid:

Full blurb:

Some of the best campaign strategies are simple, and none simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on Facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition.

Users were drawn to a Facebook profile page for the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms. People were told the first to tag their name on any item, would win it.

With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page.

via

After 50 years of using the iconic Futura typeface, IKEA has made a switch to Verdana,

As you can imagine outrage and outcry followed.

This is the absolutely brilliant response from IKEA:

We’re surprised, but I think it’s mainly experts who have expressed their views, people who are interested in fonts. I don’t think the broad public is that interested.

Verdana is a simple, cost-effective font which works well in all media and languages.

What do you think?

Does it matter what “experts” say compared to the “general public”?

Ikea are a very design based company so you’d have thought they would’ve paid more of an interest.

But I like their downplaying of it citing ‘practical reasons’. It kinda works.

Interesting anyway.