IKEA Gets Social Media Marketing Right

Using some of the most popular features on the most popular social networking site, IKEA created a wildly popular viral marketing campaign for cheap.

In order to promote IKEA’s new Malmo store that opened this Autumn, their marketing team created a Facebook profile for the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson and uploaded 12 picutres of IKEA showrooms over a two-week period into a photo album on his profile. People were encouraged to add Gordon as a friend in order to take part in IKEA’s contest: Whoever tagged themself first on any product in any of the photos, would win it. The constant tagging and comment on these photos, not to mention people writing on his wall asking for more photos, ended up on the News Feeds of thousands of Facebook users. This created a ripple effect, as their friends got into it and put it on their News Feeds, etc.

Getting people to personally promote your brand voluntarily is basically the definition of viral marketing, and IKEA hit it right on the head. I love IKEA’s innovation in the social media network, instead of simply tweeting about the new store or posting some lame video on Youtube.

Bunyan