2017 Winners

Imagine a quarter million people moving to new residences, all on the same day. That’s Moving Day in Montreal, and it happens every July 1st.

Every year, Ikea finds a new way to heighten relevance and tighten the relationship between helping people move and driving store traffic and sales. In past campaigns, the brand agency Leo Burnett have given out free branded moving boxes and transformed packaging into actual-size replicas of Ikea products. This year, the team needed a fresh way to position Ikea as a move in partner to all Montrealers packing up their homes.

Most people don’t think about buying furniture for a new place until after they’ve moved, because they don’t want to move more than they need to. Leading up to Moving Day, Montrealers are focused on purging and packing, not buying new home furnishings in advance of their move.

But buying from Ikea means products already come in compact, flat and easy-to-move boxes. With Ikea’s move-in ready furniture, it would be easy to put the old furniture out on the curb and fill the new place with inspiring pieces from Ikea. This insight became the launching point for this year’s campaign.

For the first time ever, Ikea advertised its products and Moving Day offers by showing consumers the potential within every box to transform their new space.

It started with a robust OOH buy, comprised of many unique formats. The agency even leveraged building corners to compare the depth of an Ikea flat-packed box to the width of that same assembled piece of Ikea furniture. Utilizing media space in this way allowed consumers to really grasp the benefit of moving with flat-packed furniture.

The agency also created an interactive digital banner that allowed consumers to drag packaged Ikea products into the trunk of a car. Each product that was dragged into the trunk revealed its compelling sale offer. Standard banners on Yahoo, as part of a page takeover, showed the small flat-packed product in comparison to its assembled size.

The consumer experience continued with a LaPresse interactive ad unit, which allowed consumers to seamlessly and easily drag an Ikea flat-packed box into a moving truck, but have a much more difficult time dragging a heavy old dresser into that same truck.

In social, Leo Burnett showed assembled Ikea furniture collapsing into the brand’s flat-packed box, with a series of three different products, allowing consumers to see first-hand just how easy moving with Ikea’s flat-packed furniture really is.

This year’s campaign contributed to a highly successful Moving Day period. The brand saw a 31% increase in store visitors and a 36% increase in sales in comparison to the pre-campaign week results. Sales increased by 6.7% from the same campaign period the previous year. In just 10 days, the entire campaign generated 96 million impressions. Ikea successfully disrupted the “fear of moving” and further cemented its position as the city's favourite home furnishing brand.