IKEA Melds Digital Catalogs, Instagram For Unique Social Merchandising Strategy
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
To showcase its annual PS line geared towards millennials, IKEA has found a unique application of Instagram that epitomizes the brand’s forward-thinking approach for home décor. Partnering with Moscow-based agency Instinct, the Russian division of IKEA has hacked Instagram to create a pseudo-site catalog within the platform’s grid.
“The currency of social media is sharing and Ikea has created a new offering on Instagram that’s perfectly crafted to initiate this action,” said Lawrence Herman, CEO of BlueLink Marketing, New York.
“It’s highly suited for mobile. The ability to tag, identify, and remember specific products in your own environment is extremely unique and compelling.”
Herman explained, “But it’s not about the reach of the channel. Rather, it’s all about the brand awareness and attention of this concept and the utility of Instagram to influence shoppers by helping them discover new products to buy – leveraging social engagement to drive purchases.”
To explain how it works, their main Instagram account at Ikea_ps_2014 is the ‘home page’. Using the images they have created a header and a footer and in between are the product categories, just like you would find on a conventional website.
Open a category and tap on the picture to reveal tags to each individual item featured in the photo. These tags link to separate Instagram accounts that act as ‘product pages’, sharing more information about each item such as videos, dimensions and inspiration for use. All 34 products from the IKEA PS 2014 collection have their own Instagram account. Images on the ‘product pages’ also use Instagram’s tagging function, interlinking to other items and back to IKEA’s main Instagram account (home page), as you would see on a regular website.
This video explains how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HPW6iHJ6tMM
By using the social photo sharing app in this way, IKEA is taking us on a virtual and interactive journey around their new PS collection. The only downside is the inability to link out to individual product purchasing pages on the IKEA website. But this is far outweighed by the increased exposure the social media campaign has created for their new collection amongst their target audience of young, twenty-something, urbanites- the largest user demographic of Instagram.
This is not the first time we have seen unconventional uses of Instagram. Other examples are evident in campaigns from Mazda and JWT Canada, the Toronto Silent Film Festival, and Sephora, among others.
Marketers are increasingly adopting and adapting popular applications to connect customers with relevant content, attempting to leverage the convergence of mobile and social as an avenue to place content in front of consumers during their daily engagements.
Although the mobile initiative is not commerce-enabled, IKEA is relying on mobile to drive user engagement and brand awareness.
“The reach as a standalone isn’t inclusive enough to cast a wide net and make a difference for a major retailer today, however by integrating Instagram with a retailer’s other social media networks and online presence, a significant reach can be achieved,” said Djamel Agaoua, CEO of MobPartner, Boston.