IKEA went wrong this time — Social Media Brand Fail
IKEA showcased its new bedroom and bathroom solutions via a hypnotist performance. It was unexpected, potentially brought interests and discussions, but did the campaign enhance brand preferences?
Good morning readers.
IKEA is always my favorite brand to pay attention to in terms of its social media campaigns and its spirit of trying different marketing angles to wow the audience. However, this time, IKEA seemed to present a classic “social media brand fail” in its “the time travel experiment” campaigns.
The iconic furniture brand IKEA invited and teamed up with the world-renowned hypnotist Justin Tranz to try to envision how IKEA’s furnitures can be part of customer’s everyday life in 12, 18, or even in 23 years.
In last week’s 15.S10 Social Media Management class, we spent a great amount of time discussing “Brand Personality,” which is a framework helping us to structure and analyze brand personality through a few simple questions and from there to build social media campaigns having the brand essence in mind. Questions to go over (but not necessarily to) include:
If your brand walked into this room, what would it look like? Gender? Age? Clothes? Hair? What well-known person does it most resemble?
Is it brave or weak? Funny or boring? Hard working or lazy? Trustworthy or mischievous? Social or individualistic?
What kind of car does it drive? What restaurants does it eat at? What’s its drink of choice? What’s its favorite movie?
What are its hobbies? Arts? Sports? Woodworking?
Back to the IKEA campaign, if I am going to describe IKEA as a person, I would say it’s probably a young mom or dad in their early to mid-30s. They envision their future home to be warm, stylish, have a personal-touch, and to be a masterpiece that expresses their personality.
If I am going to describe the commercial as a person again, I would probably say…a couple about to divorce, has really intense relationship with their children, not happy, not successful in their career…(negative adjectives go on…)
That’s very likely the reason why — when I first saw the commercial, first of all, I am not fully sure this was an IKEA commercial; secondly, I didn’t feel positively about it and believed that most of “IKEA fans” like me would feel the same. I do believe this is an interesting attempt of IKEA, but in terms of the story plots, the tone and manner of the commercial, and the skewed emphasis of “hypnosis” compared to IKEA’s new furniture series, the social media team could have been more articulate.
Below are some of the interesting feedback on YouTube, something we as potential social media marketers (at some point) should bear in mind.
This is Michelle Shih, a first year MBA student at MIT Sloan. I am originally from Taipei, Taiwan, working in the marketing field most of my career but making a career switch to management consulting now. I am a social media addict myself, and I am very excited to share my point of views of social media by this write-a-blog-everyweek homework in my Social Media Management class this semester.
