IKEA Back to College

OGILVY

IKEA needed to find a way to break through the “back to college” (BTC) clutter and make college bound students aware of IKEA’s full range of BTC offerings. We also wanted to keep IKEA top-of-mind even after the BTC advertising frenzy inevitably subsided.

ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) was the perfect vehicle for helping college kids settle into college, and it was the perfect showcase for IKEA’s BTC furnishings. ASMR is oddly relaxing. And so is IKEA.

We developed a series of authentic ASMR videos featuring IKEA solutions: “Oddly IKEA”.

Not only did we successfully reach the ASMR audience, we also sparked a broader conversation that cut through the back to college clutter.

Back to College sales were up +27% YOY

Picked up by major publications around the globe – from marketing and design publications like AdWeek, Fast Company and Architectural Digest to digital lifestyle publications like The Verge and Mashable to traditional media outlets like Today.com, the New York Post, and UK’s Daily Mail.

Generated over 88 million organic impressions in the week it launched. As a point of comparison, that’s nearly 70% of the impressions we generated in a month and a half of paid media activity as part of IKEA’s traditional Back to College campaign.

“Oddly IKEA” videos were viewed 1,054,227 times through the end of August. This outperforms the sponsored content we purchased as part of the traditional Back to College campaign by 35%.

The average viewing duration for our 25-minuted video was 4:07 – easily beating the industry average of 0:42 (provided by Simple Reach), and the videos were shared 12,803 times.

ASMR enthusiasts showered IKEA with love: “Omg this is heaven”; “Holy crap the tapping on the laptop was perfect lol”; “Like I should feel used but I mainly feel sleepy and like I need a new comforter”; etc. Even our featured ASMRtist (a creative director in real life) received high praise: “This woman has the voice of a whispering angel.”