IKEA’s new ad
Someone asked me last night about the furniture business, if it’s being impacted by the mortgage crisis. Yes, it has to be. So what should a furniture company - brand or retailer - do about it?
I really don’t know if you can overcome the financial realities right now. I tell my realtor friends (and family) that it may just be too tough to do much more than wait it out. What they can do, however - furniture companies and realtors alike - is position themselves for later, for when the market comes back.
IKEA is taking a more aggressive stance, investing in new creative and spending to get people to come into their stores now. “Home,” the ad says, “is the most important place in the world.”
Here’s a link to one of the new spots.
Here’s my ‘big’ idea: Ikea should create ads that creatively, brilliantly, and beautifully express all of the REALITY of its position — the experience of offering cheap, stylish, useful home furnishings — instead of reaching for some abstraction of ‘home’ or some such other nonsense. My prediction is that it can’t successfully brand ‘home’ any more than Coke could own ‘air,’ and that nobody will remember these spots (or their arcane message) 6 months from now…let alone when the market comes back. Too bad, though. It’s a marvelous store with a great story to tell (and to brand).
Posted by Jonathan Salem Baskin on 09.20.07.