Chado-Design.com

Now that social media networks like Facebook have become a commonplace occurrence in our society and literally “everyone and their mother” has a profile, its no wonder that most major brands now utilize it to maintain an online presence and communicate their brand messages. Although there are hundreds of brands using Facebook, only a few have been able to utilize it to its fullest potential. IKEA is one of those brands.

Their campaign to promote the opening of its newest store in Mälmo has been wildly successful. It has been described as brilliant, smart yet simple, genius, and innovative. With a very small budget, Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors managed to start a Facebook campaign that was able to grow organically and transcend international boundaries on its own. By creating a basic profile for the store manager of the new store they uploaded images of IKEA showrooms from the new store to his photo albums over the course of two weeks. Those who became “friends” with Gustavsson were encouraged to tag themselves in the photos over products in the showroom images for a chance of winning that particular object. As word spread across Facebook and more people tagged the photo, the showroom images where subsequently shared on all their profiles, links, and newsfeeds with millions of people in Sweden, throughout Europe, and across the planet. Instead of simply placing a banner ad on various websites hoping for a connection, IKEA got people to personally promote IKEA on the biggest social networking platform around. Word of mouth advertising is considered the most effective and sharing on Facebook is the equivalent of word of mouth these days.