Today we take a look at IKEA's exceptional timing on their catalog drop and YouTube video. Their video (
linked here) went viral last week and as of this posting has over 8 million views. A transcription of the video is available below.
http://youtu.be/Ap79MxtW6Us
Transcription of Smart Marketing – IKEA’s “bookbook” Campaign
Hi, this is Stephen Cohen the Marketing Director here at AlphaGraphics West Valley and I wanted to talk about the importance of print in marketing. Today I wanted to take a look at the IKEA bookbook campaign. There are five reasons why this campaign is very smart print marketing.
The first thing we want to look at is the YouTube video that IKEA put out about two weeks ago, right before the Apple unveiling of the iphone 6. Now the timing of this YouTube video along with the catalog drop is an essential aspect of this campaign. IKEA understand that as we got closer to the unveiling more and more people would be searching Apple and Apple would be top of mind. So they decided to make a YouTube video that showcased their catalog that they mailed out about a week before in a kind of mocking tone to Apple. So, very humorous video usage.
The second is how they’ve integrated the catalog with video, through the YouTube video and an application. So you can download on your cell phone an IKEA catalog application. A really cool part about this catalog and the application is it uses augmented reality, which is a newer form of using print in conjunction with a smart device or computer. So you can take this catalog actually and you can place it in your room and then you can use your application that you downloaded and you basically hold your screen up to the book and it will pop up furniture so you can see how furniture looks in your room. Now augmented reality is very new technology, but it is designed to help you drive action on a print piece, and that is why the catalog if so effective.
Really there are three things that the catalog is doing to drive you to take action. The first thing is downloading the application and using your smart phone so you can actually see an image of the furniture in your room which would promote whether you are going to buy it or not. The second thing, call to action wise, is basically every other page in this book has a web page so if you wanna learn more about a specific product or about a specific line of products it’s very easy for them to drive you to their website and they have given you relevant link information in here. The third thing is they want you to shop at the store so it elicits you to go and visit the IKEA store.
The fourth aspect of this that’s really smart is if you look, you probably can’t see it, but if you look right down there it says “The prices in this catalog can only get lower until June 2015, never higher.” So a lot of people when they produce print pieces are really concerned that they have a static image and they can’t go change things. IKEA did a very good job at addressing this by making sure that everyone understood when the IKEA catalog would expire and this piece would no longer be useful, as part of a marketing campaign.
The fifth reason is actually a really good piece here and it’s something that we do on emails already but if you look down at the bottom there you can opt out very easily by going to IKEA-USA.com/remove and they’ll remove you from their mailing list. So, in case you see this as junk or if your preferred communication with IKEA isn’t through print or physical media, it’s very easy for you to opt out and then they can entice you through other ways like emails or social media campaigns.
That’s five reasons why the IKEA bookbook campaign is a smart print marketing piece.