IKEA's brilliant Facebook campaign

[brown9-2]

I don't understand the last sentence in the quoted article:

Before Facebook could take credit for its own wonderful ingenuity in creating the world's most needed Web site, thousands of Swedes were spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms all around the personal galaxy known as their profile pages.

Before Facebook could take credit for creating Facebook, thousands of Swedes were spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms around Facebook? The video states this took place during the Autumn of 2009. The chronology and weird verb tense makes the sentence super confusing.

[Timothee]

Blogspam. Original story is here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10404937-71.html?part=rss&...

[Timothee]

It got fixed.

[metra]

Giving away free products will always be labeled a "brilliant campaign."

The game that was given away free a few weeks ago, Radiohead, NIN.

I'd say the campaign would be brilliant if you could measure an increase in consumers after the campaign. I would just claim my free furniture and that's it. Not necessarily shop there any further.

[foulmouthboy]

The brilliant part of it was making people tag their names into the Facebook profile's photos. You get those photos showing up in the Walls and news streams of contestants who then explain what they're doing to their 150+ friends who then tag themselves and share the promotion again.

Brilliant use of the tool to capitalize on network effects of Facebook.

[ellyagg]

Yeah, this was my problem with the claim that "Cash for Clunkers" was a raging success. People like free stuff and money, and it's not exactly rocket science to get the word spread about all the free stuff and money being handed out.

[cyen]

well, the /next/ time you need furniture, now you'll know there's an IKEA in Malmo - I suppose they put manager Gustavsson's profile in the public Malmo network, and the brilliance is in getting the word to spread so quickly (for free! minus products) in the relevant geographical region. Even giveaways usually have marketing budgets for signs, pamphlets, postcards...

[sanj]

The ability to give stuff away can make campaigns work. But is not a guarantee.

[mpk]

I'm assuming that Facebook would use data gathered from people being tagged in images to optimize their own shape recognition software.

People tagging themselves as furniture must really mess that up :)

[henriklied]

Does Facebook recognize objects in photos?

I remember reading a paper about this a year ago (where they concluded it would take to much processing), but the site seems to be down. Here's Google Cache of the PDF if anyone's interested: http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:A9_-uStMjeIJ:www.enriqu...

[eru]

What if your name is really Billy?

[stevoski]

Come on. It's Sweden. It's IKEA. I think most Swedes have heard of IKEA by now and would be aware if a new IKEA was opening in the vicinity. And Malmo is not exactly a tiny, unknown backwater. They've probably had IKEA in Malmo for decades.

I suspect the Facebook campaign was novel but not a brilliant runaway success, as measured by an increase is sales.

[wgren]

>Come on. It's Sweden. It's IKEA. I think most Swedes have heard of IKEA by now

Basic rule of advertising, repetition means reinforcement. Also even if they of course knew about the brand, now they saw products they might not have seen before.

[erikstarck]

Just FYI: IKEA has been in Malmö since probably the 70s but they recently moved to a larger store (the second largest IKEA store in the world I think) closer to Copenhagen.

[andreshb]

I think Ikea is great, but I hope this is not replicated massively by other brands.

[wallflower]

Ikea is a part of people's lives.

"It has even been estimated that one in 10 Europeans are conceived in an Ikea bed."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4254181.stm

[sevenofsix]

Cardigans are from Jönköping..not Malmö...totally different.