‘DIY by Ikea’ won Gold in Media Retail and Consumer Products at The Drum Awards, showcasing Ikea’s affordable furniture as a stylish, cost-effective solution to rising home improvement costs, transforming perceptions of home repairs and driving furniture sales.
Home improvements are becoming increasingly expensive, rising by 10% in key Ikea Al-Futtaim markets in the Middle East over the past year (Source: Colife Dubai). This trend isn’t limited to major refurbishments either; every scratched floorboard or piece of peeling wallpaper comes with a hefty price tag to repair in full, and when it’s merely a small imperfection, it hardly seems worth the expense.
Ikea has long been known for offering furniture and decoration to elevate people’s homes, but the expense of home improvement gave the brand a chance to present its products as an affordable and creative solution to people’s needs.
Offering homeowners a stylish, affordable alternative to expensive DIY.
Recent studies show that over 50% of us are delaying home improvements because of the cost, so Ikea used its famously affordable furniture to offer a solution. Why repair your home when you can improve it for less?
It’s something we’ve all done: moving a rug or bookcase to cover a blemish we don’t want our guests to see. But the rise in price of home repairs made Ikea’s affordable products the perfect way to hide the parts of our home we aren’t proud of, with furniture we are.
DIY by Ikea brings a relatable insight to life and changes the audience’s perception of home repairs, driving sales of Ikea furniture by inviting people to compare how much they would spend fixing things properly with the cost of some stylish, Swedish design.
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Ikea observed how the rising cost of home improvement means that people are increasingly leaving damages unrepaired and ignoring the eyesores around their homes. The rise of ‘home improvement hacks’ and other similarly branded quick fixes for household damage on social media showed Ikea that people are craving an affordable fix for these blemishes. Ikea saw an opportunity to offer their products and services as a solution, providing furniture you can be proud of, at a price you can live with.
Ikea is all about stylish but pragmatic design, so to visualize such a pure and instantly recognizable insight, the agency decided to keep things simple.
Using Ikea’s own product photography as inspiration, the out-of-home and print showed six rooms that had some recognizable damage and used a split screen to then show the annoying imperfections simply covered up with beautiful Scandinavian furniture.
In film, the same insight came to life with just as much simplicity. Scratched floorboards, peeling wallpaper, and flaky walls were dealt with by a homeowner effortlessly hiding them with a LOHALS rug, a RÖDALM frame, and MICKE drawers.
The campaign of three films and six static executions was executed strategically, targeting homeowners when they were deciding whether or not to repair their home, namely in pre-roll films before YouTube DIY videos and in outdoor media outside popular hardware stores.
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