IKEA Canada is the latest brand to turn the spotlight on its customers.
On Monday the retailer launched the second phase of its “Every Second” campaign with a 30-second spot that features 27 one-second clips shot by its customers.
The clips are the result of an open call for customers to share their intimate family moments with the brand on social media using the hashtag #EverySecond during the first phase of the campaign. According to Lauren MacDonald, deputy country marketing manager for IKEA Canada, the brand received hundreds of videos, far surpassing its goal of 150 submissions.
Using those submissions, the brand’s agency, Leo Burnett Toronto, stitched together an ad that shows a wide array of family moments.
With families busier than ever, MacDonald said the goal of the spot was to show how precious the time they spend together at home is. “We want to celebrate every moment at home – whether it being washing the dishes or snuggling with your kids,” MacDonald wrote in an email to Marketing. “Every moment we spend together counts and we’re celebrating the big, the small and all of the moments in between.”
In selecting which clips to use in the final spot, the brand aimed to reflect the diversity of its customer base. The spot showcases several different types of families as well as customers of varied backgrounds.
“When we got all of the footage in it was actually really gratifying,” said Morgan Kurchak, group creative director at Leo Burnett Toronto. “You have this picture in your mind of what multicultural Canada is and it was there in everything that was submitted.”
“It was easy to reflect the country back, because it was the country that inputted in.”
“Every Second” will serve as IKEA’s umbrella brand campaign for 2016. It follows “House Rules,” the brand’s 2014 brand campaign, which asked consumers to share their own home rules on social media.
After seeing engagement spike during that campaign, the retailer wanted to find a way to include customers in its creative again this year.
IKEA is one of many brands that have recently elected to use real consumers in ads rather than actors. Holt Renfrew recently took a similar approach with its “All Together” campaign. RBC and the CFL have also created ads using videos submitted by their customers. (For more on this approach, read Marketing‘s August 2015 cover story.)
The media buy for “Every Second” was handled by Jungle Media. The ad is running both online and via broadcast, where it will reach a large audience on Sunday during the Academy Awards on CTV. The ad is running during programming that skews towards women and families including Survivor, Once Upon a Time and Modern Family. On specialty, it’s running on HGTV, the W Network, YTV and CMT.
Phase two of “Every Second” represents about 30% of the total media buy for the campaign.
