2022 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Brands spend upwards of 300 Million dollars sponsoring the UEFA Euro 2020. In 2021, the tournament dominated the media landscape as it was the first major international sporting event with fans in the stands in over a year. With the world watching, brands like Coca-cola and Visa were fighting to own the moment. IKEA wanted to create some noise during the tournament. But not being a sponsor made it extremely difficult.

IKEA is currently transforming into a leading brand in sustainability, pledging to be fully circular by 2030. During a post-game press conference during Euro 2020, Portuguese legend Christiano Ronaldo made headlines when he pushed away the Coca-Cola bottles in front of him and held up a bottle of water saying “Agua.” That moment cost Coca-Cola a reported 4 Billion dollars and it gave IKEA the perfect opportunity to promote a sustainable message and ultimately hijack the conversation of the tournament with a recyclable IKEA water bottle.

They reacted in real-time with their response, blasting a reactive post across their social channels. Their post featured IKEA’s famous reusable glass KORKEN water bottle on a white background with IKEA's low price and they re-named the bottle to “CRISTIANO” while echoing Cristiano Ronaldo’s message, drink water, but sustainably. They used Instagram in the way it was meant to be used - in real time. What looked like a typical product ad from the brand on people’s feeds was actually an interesting, timely take on an event that was taking over the news. Ronaldo’s act was something people were talking about, and they used social channels as a way to not only get in on that conversation, but to drive an actual business objective in increasing awareness around IKEA’s sustainability value.

The post exploded online, earning global attention. Their social execution earned them 700 million earned impressions in 48 hours and $25 million in paid media value. They made their post shoppable and saw a 14% increase in sales the day of the post and an increase of 7% in web traffic. CRISTIANO became IKEA’s most talked about social post ever. And while they weren’t a sponsor of the Euro and didn’t pay a single dollar to be part of the tournament, IKEA became the #2 most talked about brand of the tournament.

Credits

Agency: Rethink
Client: IKEA Canada
Chief Creative Officer: Aaron Starkman
Executive Creative Director: Mike Dubrick
Creative Directors: Xavier Blais, Maxime Sauté
Associate Creative Director: Zachary Bautista
Art Director: Zachary Bautista, Jean-Nicolas Duval, Edouard Coune, Maxime Saute
Writer: Xavier Blais
Strategist: Shereen Ladha, Sean McDonald
Group Account Director: Sarah Riedlinger
Group Account Director: Alex Lefebvre
Media Agency: Carat
Vice President, Group Account Director: Karen Hrstic
Associate Account Director: Vanessa Coutinho
Account Supervisor: Faizal Shaikh
Media Planner: Monalyn Quelnat
Media Coordinator: Crystal Kim