IKEA ‘Kidnaps’ Facebook

Ikea are using Facebook to promote their new store.

IKEA has long been known for using creativity to save on operating costs and offer clients trendy, but inexpensive furniture. From discount Swedish meat balls in the cafeteria to disassembled dining room tables in paper boxes, IKEA is seen by some as the fast-food equivalent of the furniture world. But the Swedish chain also showed this week that it is technologically savvy, by using Facebook to attract new customers. When IKEA opened a new store in Malmö, Sweden, the firm’s marketing agency immediately set up a Facebook profile for the outlet’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Customers were asked to visit “IkeaGordon’s” profile on Facebook and tag themselves to the myriad of pictures featuring IKEA sofas, tables, chairs, beds, vases and other retail items. The first person to tag a piece of furniture on Facebook wins the item.

Not surprisingly, thousands of Facebook users ran to IKEA’s new profile to tag themselves to their favourite dining room set or kitchen collection. According to the video posted to what IKEA calls its “Facebook Showroom,” the goal was to engage as many customers as possible in the opening of the new Malmö store and “extend the store” beyond the city’s borders. In the clever, upbeat video, IKEA speaks about “kidnapping” Facebook’s most popular function, namely tagging, and uploaded a dozen photos featuring the store’s showrooms. Whenever someone was the first to win a piece of furniture displayed in the photo, Gordon Gustavsson would leave a comment underneath and would even engage in dialogue with thousands of excited Facebook users.

But what really made this use of Facebook ingenious? By getting thousands of people to tag their names to Facebook photos, IKEA was advertising its products for free throughout the popular social networking, as users displayed the company’s furniture on their own profiles.