2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Objective & Challenge
The sleep category has become crowded with new, direct-to-consumer mattress-in-a-box brands popping up everywhere and gaining popularity. The agency needed to position IKEA as a true ‘sleep expert’ and remind shoppers of its range of sleep products. IKEA uses its expertise in design to create solutions that help people fall asleep and stay asleep (without breaking the bank) through a wide range of mattresses, blackout curtains, and temperature-controlling linens.

Insights & Strategy
Through research into life at home, the team uncovered a particular audience notoriously known for their erratic sleeping patterns and poor quality of sleep: newborn babies and their exhausted parents.

They discovered that many new parents use whitenoise and other ambient sounds to help keep their babies asleep, and many turn to Spotify playlists to find the right sounds. A search on Spotify will yield hundreds of playlists for babies including whitenoise, lullabies, sounds of the forest, and soothing flute melodies.

More than half of all Spotify users are using the free version of the service, and their peaceful playlists are interrupted by ads, and with many new parents not being able to afford luxuries like paid subscriptions, they took to Twitter to air their frustrations about the interruption of their baby’s precious sleep.

What if IKEA could help parents prevent their babies from waking up to show that the retailer really understands how important sleep is? They’re the sleep experts after all.

Execution
The use of Spotify technology to drive this campaign was crucial - the very insight relied on the user experience and Spotify’s unique capabilities. IKEA decided to buy all the ad space on popular sleep playlists for babies and create a series of ads that matched the tone of the tracks in the playlist. We created 11 ads, each with unique SFX like whitenoise, raindrops, and ocean waves, and a soothing whispered VO from IKEA’s longtime Swedish spokesperson, Jonas, delivering our sleep message.

Since babies sleep at all times of the day, the goal was to not wake the baby, while positioning IKEA as a sleep expert to thankful parents who were listening nearby. The brand even gave parents the option to tap on a companion banner and shop IKEA’s bedroom solutions during their rare moment of peace.

While ads usually diminish the user experience, the campaign actually enhanced it by helping babies stay asleep by blocking out loud ads with our soft, quiet, shushy ones.

The Spotify campaign acted as a lead-up to IKEA’s bedroom event. This always-on tactic allowed IKEA to build equity and top of mind awareness going into the bedroom event, which was then supported by TV, radio, social, and digital in order to convert customers on priority sale items.

Results
The audio ads drove a click through rate that was 25% higher than the Spotify average, directing thankful parents to IKEA.ca to shop for sleep products. Both Native and In-Playlist Desktop Overlays outperformed Spotify average benchmarks by 59%. Finally, the Mobile Overlay companion banner delivered a CTR 164% above the Spotify benchmark.

Most importantly, IKEA didn’t wake any babies.

Credits

Creative Director: Aaron Starkman, Mike Dubrick, Leia Rogers, Morgan Tierney, Hans Thiessen
Art Director: Charmaine Cheng
Writer: Evan Kane
Head of Strategy: Sean McDonald
Strategy Director: Stacy Ross, Shereen Ladha
Broadcast Producer (in house): Anna Tricinci
Production Company: Vapor Music
Audio Director: Ted Rosnick
Engineer: Ryan Chalmers
Audio Producer: Kat Stewart
Media: Carat
Group Account Director: Sarah Riedlinger
Account Director: Daniel Riggi