Canadian brands are pretty slow to adopt social media marketing, but it looks like they can learn something from Swedish furniture giant Ikea. They recently opened a new store in Malmo, Sweden and decided to launch the store with an innovative push to retail using Facebook.
Their online agency (Forsman and Bodenfors) setup a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. They then uploaded hundreds of images of the new IKEA showroom to the Facebook account. The agency then put out word that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it. This is a great case of Social media marketing and synergies between online and retail. A ton of people had Ikea furniture showing up in their facebook feeds and profiles as they tagged the images. Pretty crafty indeed!
The YouTube video below showcases their strategy and success:
Only downside of the campaign was that one had to be able to find Gordon’s profile. Those who weren’t his friends, or friends of his friends, the general public would be too late to participate in the tagging frenzy.
Still the idea was good, and should be applauded for their effort creating such a clever and fun campaign with few resources
They must have setup a fan page and driven media there explaining the steps to users. I assume his profile was set to accept all invitations , if that still exists on facebook (or they may have written a script).
If you’re an giant corp like Ikea, it shouldn’t take you long to build up a good audience volume. Especially with the way Facebook displays behavior updates or Friends in your list and/or your friends friends .
Like you said Ammar; they must have just sent some media there and Boom!