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Mother London

The Story of The Wonderful Everyday

In 2013, after 25 years of almost continuous growth, IKEA was facing some tough challenges. The businesses’ rate of growth was starting to decline, and rivals were hot on IKEA’s tail, making it their mission to overtake IKEA’s market leadership as Britain’s biggest homeware retailer. We set out to reverse the decline, re-establish IKEA as the category leader and future proof the business for years to come. 

A big challenge required a big step change in our approach to communications. We needed a bold, future-facing point of view on modern life at home; one that could reimagine IKEA’s role and capture hearts and homes in the UK - attracting new shoppers, and encouraging more people to spend across more ranges, more often. We went back to the origins of IKEA itself, to the founding purpose of the business; ‘To better the lives of the many people’.

Full of Swedish Wisdom, The Wonderful Everyday Was Born

The everyday is often seen as boring, and we tend to overlook it in favour of far-off, fleeting celebrations in our calendars. But why? For IKEA, the everyday is the important bit - whether that’s giving you a better night's sleep, clever storage solutions that make more of your home, less arguments and less daily irritations. With this in mind, we rejected seasonal and event-driven marketing in favour of a more continuous, always-on approach. 

The Wonderful Everyday platform delivers across a range of products and a depth of channels. It’s an organising idea that influences the entire IKEA business - from brand, to products, store openings and colleagues. It stretches across home themes like sleeping, cooking, playing, storage and celebrates them all in equal measure.

The Wonderful Everyday Seven Years On: Tomorrow Starts Tonight

Our recent IKEA campaign is anchored in the most universally everyday theme of all. Sleep was fast becoming the hottest topic in wellness - and with our home furnishing competitors. IKEA wanted to inspire its customers to sleep better and for longer. 

Our challenge: we all claim to love sleep; yet we neglect it nightly, in favour of waking life. Which is ironic, considering the myriad benefits good sleep brings to the waking day - enhancing creativity, athletic performance and health to name just a few. So if we were to change the many’s attitudes and behaviours towards sleep, we needed to show that the more you sleep, the more you get out of life. Enter our campaign: Tomorrow Starts Tonight. 

To launch this platform at scale, we created a TVC prequel to Aesop’s classic fable, the Hare & the Tortoise. In this modern reimagining, a great night's sleep is revealed as the secret to Tortoise’s success the next day – while the Hare wastes the night before the big race on (rather relatable) distractions. We also created a suite of provocative OOH to run alongside the TV. This work takes on the life-enhancing promises of industries that we spend time and money chasing –energy drinks, vitamin supplements and anti-ageing- highlighting how the benefits of sleep are proven to deliver the same results (with a whole lot less faff and nonsense).

Creating a Wonderful Tomorrow Together: Fortune Favours the Frugal

In our most recent international campaign for IKEA, we tackle the F-word. Frugal often has negative connotations, but who said it has to mean miserly or unglamorous?! Our new TVC and OOH encourages us to think differently of the benefits of a frugal life and celebrates the small, everyday things we can do to be more environmentally friendly, with the help of IKEA. 

The campaign launches against the backdrop of IKEA’s commitment to sustainability, having recently pledged that all products will be made from recycled or regenerative materials by 2030. Last year alone, IKEA introduced a new, plant-based alternative to their iconic meatball, which has just 4% of the classic meatball’s carbon footprint and announced the move to non-alkaline batteries. In January 2021, IKEA launched Buy Back – an initiative that will see stores buy back unwanted IKEA furniture from customers in return for a voucher to spend when they really need something. 

Some (wonderful) Results

The Wonderful Everyday has delivered unprecedented growth for IKEA, and is consistently recognised as one of the most effective, creatively awarded and enduring campaigns in the UK.

In the words of IKEA's founder...

Most things remain to be done. A glorious future! ,

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IKEA 'The Wonderful Everyday'

From flat-pack falling flat to a Wonderful Everyday

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• Resources & Initiatives
• IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Studies

IKEA: Making the everyday wonderful when the world turned anything but

After several successful years, ‘The Wonderful Everyday’, a platform launched to revitalise IKEA’s brand health and sales, faced new challenges. Threats ranged from new competitors and the growth in ecommerce (in which IKEA trailed in fifth place) to criticism of the brand’s sustainability record, and the potential impact on sales of the cost of living crisis. This case describes how between 2018 and 2023 creative advertising and a regularly optimised media mix helped shift perceptions about IKEA’s range, affordability, sustainability, and accessibility. It is estimated the strategy drove consistent growth in market share and almost £580m of profit.

The Wonderful Everyday

IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Study 2018

After 25 years of growth, IKEA’s UK sales, penetration and footfall were all declining. It needed to gain more customers and get people to buy a broader range of its products. ‘The Wonderful Everyday’ strategy rejected seasonal or event-driven marketing for an always-on approach with more personalised copy. Media were chosen to reach consumers when they were most likely to be thinking of their homes. Penetration rose 10% and all IKEA product categories reported growth. It is estimated that £755m of incremental revenue was generated and the ROMI was calculated at £2.31 for every £1 invested.

Ingvar said “The feeling of having finished something is an effective sleeping pill.” At IKEA, we are never finished, always on the way, always doing and learning. So although The Wonderful Everyday has been running for more than four years now, no two campaigns within it have ever been the same; each time we build on what we have learnt from the campaign before, and this is something we continue to do. This doesn’t mean getting it right every time—we’ve pursued different routes that haven’t always succeeded, but that doesn’t mean they are dead-ends, we are learning every step along the way. But performance is only half the story, for our teams process is equally important; we have spent a lot of time working with Mother and our agencies to develop a process that is able to help us make the everyday marketing reality smoother and more effective. After all, shouldn’t how we work together be as wonderful as the work we create together?

Laurent Tiersen, Marketing Manager IKEA UK

Silver Winner

Mother Vizeum

Principal Authors

• Kieran Bradshaw - Mother

Contributing Authors

• Aaron Haynes - Vizeum
• Charlie Ebdy - Vizeum
• Adam Bailey - MediaCom Business Science
• Andrew Deykin - Data2Decisions

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IKEA & Mother London, “The Wonderful Everyday”

All images and videos courtesy of Mother London. Since  IKEA  first made its debut in the United Kingdom in 1987, the retailer has become a mainstay for furniture and home furnishings. However, in 2013, sales growth and penetration had declined, and the company was challenged to turn the downward trend around.

IKEA teamed up with agency partner,  Mother London , to develop a communications strategy that would help revitalize the brand. IKEA’s vision globally is “to create a better everyday life for the many people.” Building on this idea, the team introduced “ The Wonderful Everyday ,” a celebration of life’s everyday moments and the ways that IKEA can enhance them. Whimsical creative work drew attention to things that might usually be overlooked, like the simple joy of well-designed storage. The campaign ran on a variety of channels, primarily focusing on TV and social media, including Facebook and Instagram.

The effort ultimately exceeded sales objectives. IKEA and Mother London’s “The Wonderful Everyday” earned two Gold trophies at the 2017  Effie Awards UK  Gala, where IKEA was also named Brand of the Year.

We asked  Kieran Bradshaw, Strategy Director  at  Mother London , to share his perspective on the Effie-winning work. Read on to learn the biggest challenge his team faced in bringing their idea to life, and what Bradshaw learned about brand purpose along the way.

Tell us a bit about your Effie-winning effort, “The Wonderful Everyday.” What were your objectives?

KB: Ultimately we had two core challenges; change the fortunes of the business (turn around declining sales growth/revenue/penetration) and give the brand a renewed sense of meaning, not just for consumers but also for co-workers and stakeholders alike.

What was your big idea? What was the insight that led to it, and how did you arrive at that insight?

KB: Our idea was to celebrate that IKEA exists to improve the everyday; this was really a benefit-led expression of the brand’s core purpose that was attuned to both the needs of consumers and the contemporary cultural dynamics.

How did you bring the idea to life?

KB: Our creative platform was simply an elevation of our strategic idea; Life isn’t about fleeting events or a summer holiday, it’s the little, everyday things that make it what it is: The Wonderful Everyday. To show how wonderful IKEA believes the everyday really is, we created a brand new world of hyperbolic, surreal and cinematic renditions of life at home that demonstrated insight, yet brought more to people’s lives than simply holding up a mirror to everyday life.

What was your biggest challenge in bringing your idea to life? How were you able to overcome that challenge?

KB: With 10,000 SKUs across 21 categories and 24 million potential households to target, our biggest challenge was focus. Knowing how broadly distributed potential purchase occasions were for different product categories, we could never really be relevant to all at once.

To address this, we created a model of communicating a product category, but through the lens of the brand — a more elevated approach that stood a better chance of illustrating a more universally relevant point of view; this enabled us to deliver a return in the highlighted category, but more broadly, a halo across the whole business.

What is the biggest learning you’ve taken away from this effort?

KB: Every brand has an interesting starting point, whether it be a truth, a point of view or a purpose. By using this as an anchoring point it’s possible to create a brand platform that can endure whatever challenge lies ahead. Although much of the industry’s narrative around brand purpose has been rightly critical — in some instances campaigns have perhaps overstepped the mark towards navel-gazing — when it is done with a respect for culture and with a consumer benefit in mind, it can be a real galvanizing force for the organization, both inside and out.

Is there anything else we should know about “The Wonderful Everyday?”

KB: Working on IKEA has changed how we think about our own homes and the impact they have on our everyday. By considering the notion of effectiveness in relation to our own environment, it’s surprising to see how we can apply furniture and home furnishings to deliver an effect that improves our daily lives, whether it be a hook that helps children get ready for school in mornings that saves time and drama, or storage that helps you organize your clothes and gives you back five minutes extra in bed.

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IKEA: The Wonderful Everyday – Six years and counting

• Furniture & furnishings retail
• United Kingdom

Campaign details

Brand: IKEA Client: IKEA Agency: Mother London / Vizeum

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THE WONDERFUL EVERYDAY OF IKEA ADS

When it comes to eye-catching, memorable ads, IKEA’s are some of our favourites.

The key elements that mark out the Swedish retailer’s campaigns are a combination of humour, playfulness and emotion, often – but not always – focusing in on families having fun together, and how your home is a big part of that (especially relevant after the last couple of years).

They’ve been running their delightful ‘The Wonderful Everyday’ spots since early 2014 and to celebrate the series, we’re taking a look at the best IKEA ads.

Who Makes The Wonderful Everyday Ads?

Who do they trust to keep coming up with the goods?

In an age where brands often chop and change agencies to get a fresh take, IKEA have forged a long-standing relationship with creative agency Mother London.

UK marketing boss Laurent Tiersen told Marketing Week that, ‘We prefer to invest in a long-term partnership and not keep hopping around. Therefore, we make sure all our agencies, from creative to media, develop things together. We work with Mother London like we would work with a designer on a new piece of furniture; there’s collaboration every step of the way.

‘If we work with a designer, we also work with the supplier to find the right set up to make sure their product is ethical, functional, beautiful and sustainable. It’s the same process with our creative and media agency partners. We regularly ask Mother London’s advice on wider business decisions such as how we can position ourselves in the UK market or how we approach prices. This level of collaboration is key to our success.’

IKEA The Wonderful Everyday

IKEA made its UK debut in 1987; however, by 2013, sales growth had declined and they challenged Mother London to develop a communications strategy to revitalise the brand.

Mother’s Strategy Director, Kieran Bradshaw, said that they faced two core challenges, ‘change the fortunes of the business (turn around declining sales growth/revenue/penetration) and give the brand a renewed sense of meaning – not just for consumers, but also for co-workers and stakeholders.’

The team hit on the idea that life isn’t about fleeting events, like a summer holiday, but the little, everyday things.

Hence creating, ‘a brand new world of hyperbolic, surreal and cinematic renditions of life at home that demonstrated insight, yet brought more to people’s lives than simply holding up a mirror to everyday life.’

IKEA Ads 2021

‘every home is a haven’.

Aka the ‘brawn bears’ ad, Mother London’s spot was voted by creative peers in the Thinkbox Academy as the best TV ad to debut in September/October 2021, and it was definitely one of our favourite ads of last year.

Mother said that the brief was to set out IKEA’s, ‘democratic mission: to make every home a haven’. That is, home should be a place where you feel safe, happy and protected, free from everyday life’s distractions.

What makes you feel safe and secure when you’re a kid? Cuddling a teddy bear. Hence the buff bear bouncers defending the family home.

The Mother team then, ‘spent a lot of time crafting the moments of protection in the film and figuring out how to do them in a way that landed the idea but also felt really playful and charming. For instance, why just hang up on an unwanted work call when the bear could crush the phone to smithereens? That’s much more fun.’

The team told Campaign , ‘TV is where IKEA set out its strong point of view on everyday life at home and the importance it plays in everyday life. It’s where we inspire people to think differently about the home, not just for different’s sake, but because of the big emotional benefits it can bring to their lives. It’s also an opportunity to really revel in the wonder and magic that endears people to the brand.’ Which of course exactly chimes with the retailer’s tagline, ‘The wonderful everyday’.

The soulful hip hop track used on the ad is Sampa the Great’s ‘Final Form’, from the Zambian rapper’s debut album, The Return .

‘Change a Bit for Good’

Are you suffering ‘consumer fatigue’ when it comes to sustainable living? IKEA’s eco and sustainability-themed ad from May 2021 will strike a chord with anyone who loved Pixar’s Wall-E .

A determined droid, inspired by a billboard that says, ‘Defender Droids Save the Planet’, tries his best to make a difference in cleaning up the environment, travelling from a clogged-up canal to taking on a truck and then trying to tackle a huge oil slick on a beach. His efforts are constantly thwarted and he returns home, looking defeated and utterly dejected.

However, his little droid family home is kitted out with IKEA products, from a string bag for their veg to glass bowls that enable them to batch-cook, minimising food waste, and they’re even using a Flisat wooden toy storage box on wheels to grow veg in.

Our cute robot ends his day with a smile. The ad expertly taps into how so many of us feel: we can’t have an impact when it comes to saving the planet. However, IKEA’s idea is that if we all make a few easy changes to live more sustainably, the power of change is in everybody’s hands.

The music used on the ad is ‘Keep Movin’ by Crosby St Models, which features a mix of strings and determined beats with a slightly robotic, processed vocal , ideal for personifying our hero and his mission.

IKEA Ads 2020

The ‘Fortune Favours the Frugal’ ad from December 2020 also demonstrates the brand’s ‘waving goodbye to waste and embracing living in moderation’ ethos.

IKEA’s Marketing Communications Manager, Kemi Anthony, said, ‘We’ve set the ambitious goal of becoming fully circular and climate positive by 2030,’ and that their aim is, ‘To democratise sustainability, demonstrating how easy it actually is to make very simple, affordable and meaningful changes.’

An asteroid made of plastic toys, bottles and bags is shown rocketing towards Earth, contrasted with shots of a family who are living sustainably.

A little girl listens to a tape on a Walkman (which is when the ad’s soundtrack, the suitably titled ‘Makin’ it Better’ by The Barons, kicks in), pickled food is put into glass jars with wooden tops, while there are herbs growing in the Bittergurka herb pot, and a woman replaces a lightbulb with one that’s more energy-efficient.

As the asteroid gradually breaks up on entry, there’s a final plastic drinks bottle that lands in the family’s backyard. The little girl sprints out, picks it up and pops it into their recycling bin in the kitchen.

IKEA’s latest recruitment ad, ‘Taste the Future’, further develops their sustainability theme:

‘The Hare’ is a fantastic IKEA bedroom advertisement from September 2020, which provides a hilarious ‘prequel’ to the fable of The Tortoise and The Hare.

Our long-eared hero sets off, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a BIG night out with the lads, incorporating everything from the pub to a kebab, a lengthy walk home when he misses the night bus, and then compounds the effect by staying up in the wee small hours when he’s home, phone-scrolling and watching TV, before eventually nodding off on the sofa.

Meanwhile, in an apartment across town, Tortoise has had a lovely restful night’s sleep – the unsung hero of a great day (check out his huge stack of pillows and fluffy duvet!).

He’s up and at ’em and ready to take on the race. Another bang-on song title – ‘Witness the Fitness’ by Roots Manuva – speaks to the dedication the Mother London team have for finding exactly the right fit for their ads .

‘Conquer the Great Indoors/Lion Man’

‘Did you know that a lion spends more than 18 hours a day relaxing?’ asks the soothing Wonderful Everyday voiceover man.

The camera pans over a lion (well, a person in a massive lion suit), luxuriating on his lovely sofa (amusingly accompanied by his pet tabby cat). He watches some lion-based documentaries, reads a book with his feet up and does a few yoga stretches.

However, the lion’s approach isn’t laziness, it’s preparation for taking on the energy required to entertain a bunch of energetic kids who then burst into the sitting room; our hero entertains them with everything from balloons to rides.

‘Relax into greatness’ is the advice we’re given, to relax and recharge both our bodies and minds.

IKEA Ads 2019

‘The Nightclub’, IKEA’s ad from January 2019, celebrated its belief that ‘the greatest nights are the ones spent in bed’. Crowds of people are shown rocking up to a club and joining the queue.

However, instead of sporting club gear, they’re wearing onesies, PJs and slippers; as they enter the club, they’re greeted by an array of beds under the mood lighting.

They do their pre-sleep prep (face masks, teeth brushing, luxury hot chocolate – plus some bedtime reading and bouncing around), before snuggling down for a delicious night of sleep.

And the soundtrack? What could be better than Roy Orbison’s epic ‘In Dreams’? Cleverly, this is an IKEA bedroom ad that’s not an IKEA bedroom ad.

IKEA Ads 2018

‘Ghosts’ showcases IKEA’s stunning fabric selection, as a bunch of bright, bold spooks gatecrash a dull party hosted by white sheet-clad ghosts in a plain, largely beige, rather uninspiring suburban house, whose owners have gone out for the evening (special shout-out to the detail of the ghost dog!)

Our colourful, patterned gang quickly take over the decks, putting on K7’s 90s hip hop anthem, ‘Come Baby Come’, start break-dancing and body-popping and everyone’s having a great time.

When they spot the car headlights of the owners returning, however, all the ‘ghosts’ chuck themselves around the sitting room: a rug on the floor, a throw on the sofa, even the curtains. ‘Be a maverick with fabric’ is the tagline, as the homeowners look a bit perplexed by their brand new, style-and-personality-filled sitting room.

For some extra fun, check out the VFX shots behind the scenes:

IKEA Kitchen Advertisement

IKEA’s ‘Cooks’ ad from July 2016 shows that when it comes to spending time in the kitchen, it’s about much more than food. ‘Don’t forget to feed Jo’, a mum says to her dad, as she heads off out, leaving the little girl and her granddad together, both parties looking slightly alarmed.

The pair then proceed to have huge amounts of fun, messing about with food, tastes and utensils and making each other laugh uproariously.

The resulting food (soup made in a wok, drunk from glasses) and sandwiches, may be disgusting (judging by granddad’s expression at the end), but the two have had a brilliant time together and are still merrily drumming away on a stack of pans by the time mum gets back home.

The ad was directed by A-list French film director, producer and screenwriter Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who’s perhaps most famous for black comedy Delicatessen , The City of Lost Children and his biggest success, Amelie .

The track used is ‘Caravan’ by Stephane Grappelli, which has bags of jazzy swing, and, of course, plenty of drumming and cymbals to tie in with the ad’s final frames.

It’s perfect for this creative, as jazz is famous for bringing together freeform elements and making them work together.

IKEA Christmas Ads

‘Waste’ was made by BBDO Russia in 2020, highlighting the issue of food waste during the holiday season.

A small boy dodges huge pieces of food as they come crashing down from the sky onto the snowy streets where he’s playing.

A giant cheese-and-olive toothpick! A turkey leg! He dives through a hole in a piece of cheese and has to outrun a tangerine (much like Indiana Jones’s escape in Raiders of the Lost Ark ) before making it back to his tower block (complete with a draping of grapes), where he finds his mum scraping leftovers into the bin after a meal.

‘What if nature returns everything we throw away during the holidays?’ questions the voiceover as mother and son look in horror at the food raining down past their window. ‘Don’t let your celebrations go to waste’ is the tagline, as the two pack up the leftovers in IKEA’s Tupperware-style ‘lock and lock’ containers.

The ad is soundtracked by the classic Christmas carol, ‘Here Come the Bells’ , which, with its roundel structure, and layering of the voices, mimics the food cascading down from the heavens.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is a festive Canadian IKEA ad from 2021, which uses an iconic Bollywood track. The Canadian family of South Asian heritage come together for the holidays, helped by IKEA’s little touches. The ‘Assemble Together’ campaign was created by a team that included members from a diverse set of cultural backgrounds and perspectives.

From Indian and Persian to Filipino and Italian, and of course Canadian and Swedish too, the diverse personal experiences, unique holiday traditions and celebrations from across the group helped to inform the campaign insight, creative execution, and production decisions.

The track used is ‘Chaiyya Chaiyaa’, an Indian pop-folk song, used in the Bollywood film Dil Se, composed by Oscar and Grammy-winner A.R. Rahman ( Slumdog Millionaire ).

As for the best IKEA Christmas ad, it’s still got to be ‘Silence the Critics’ from 2019. A wonderfully ludicrous take on the state of our homes over the holidays, and the pressure people feel when it comes to entertaining and hosting, a crew of household objects unite to perform a scathing diss track, taking down nearly everything in the house.

Legendary grime emcee D Double E did the duties and it won industry awards including two Yellow Pencils at the D&AD Awards.

Holly Fraser, Director of Content at WePresent, revealed why she thought the ad deserved the award: ‘Work that should be celebrated is work that feels new, that breaks the mould and ignites conversation. That’s exactly what IKEA’s ‘Silence the Critics’ does. Subverting the tired, ‘pull at the heartstring’ formula usually rolled out for holiday season advertising, it instead uses grime music to create their own diss track, targeting the house in the ad. The result is a clever, catchy, conversation-starting piece of work that lived far beyond its original purpose, and instead turned into a cultural moment.’

Clever, catchy and conversation-starting seems to sum up IKEA’s whole #TheWonderfulEveryday campaign – and long may it continue.

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