IKEA - IKEA + Airbnb [2015]

IKEA + Airbnb To raise awareness of IKEA bedroom solutions we invited Australians to spend the night in one of the most iconic buildings in the world – the big blue box. Yes, we transformed IKEA Tempe, in Sydney, into a fully functioning Bed and Breakfast. We created three unique listings on Airbnb to showcase the range, plus communal areas for guests, a central dining table and hang-out rooms for kids.

The partnership with Airbnb gained us global attention, over 250+ global news outlets featured the campaign, including Mashable, Time, Creativity – Pick of the Day, Adweek, PSFK, Huffington Post, Gizmodo, Daily Mail UK, USA Today, NBC, Apartment Therapy, Elle Décor and plenty more. Featured in Creative Review's 2015 Annual and PSFK's Future of Retail report.

Uploaded by Alastair Reilly on 2015-10-26.

Execution

Three themed listings were created for IKEA Tempe and placed on Airbnb to showcase the variety of the IKEA’s bedroom ranges. On top of that, communal areas were built for families to sample food from the IKEA restaurant. A children’s quarter was also built to showcase the many safe and creative solutions IKEA has to offer.

We knew that the partnership announcement would generate most PR coverage. With that in mind and to keep media outlets interested after launch, we looked for ways to extend the idea beyond the B&B story. We polled people to find out how they’d like to be woken up, and produced a PR-worthy wake up call for our guests, which involved puppies and an orchestra.

This activity resulted in a second burst of coverage with both local and global publishers including live broadcast coverage. We used IKEA’s owned social channels to amplify content throughout the campaign

The Results

The idea of IKEA partnering with Airbnb to offer people a chance to spend the night in the Sydney Tempe store caught people’s imaginations. It might only have given 3 families the chance to stay in the store overnight and to test-drive the products. But it re-positioned IKEA as a brand that did bedrooms in the eyes of millions.

PR coverage reached an audience of 798,176,903 across broadcast, print, blogs, websites, trend sites and social, making news around the world. All for a modest budget, giving a cost per touch ROI of $0.002.

And we didn’t just drive awareness. Store visits saw a 22.75% uplift YOY over campaign period, including the highest number of visits on a single day that year; and this was reflected in sales, IKEA seeing a 17.75% uplift YOY over the campaign period for their bedroom ranges.

The added bonus – our partnership with Airbnb has lead to many more opportunities throughout the year to revisit the huge Airbnb audience. An audience who we know are deeply interested in their homes and well placed to be IKEA advocates.

Awards

  • One Show Bronze Pencil 2015 - Branded Content

  • One Show Merit 2015 - Social Media & Viral Marketing

  • Webby Awards Winner Social, Events 2015 - Ikea AirBNB

  • CLIO Awards Shortlist 2015 - Public relations

  • AWARD Bronze 2015 - Best sponsorship or partnership campaign

  • Commscon 2015 - B2C Campaign of the Year

  • Featured in Creative Review's 2015 Annual

  • Featured in PSFK's Future of Retail report

Press