Get organised! 5 examples of IKEA’s innovative use of outdoor advertising

In this globalised world that we live in, urbanisation is inevitable and results in cities expanding, living spaces shrinking and therefore time spent out of home increasing. Furniture maker IKEA likes to make the best out of both worlds by innovatively using the outdoor medium to highlight- the solutions it proposes to fit everyday objects and utilities into smaller spaces, all the while keeping a relaxing and homely feel. An outdoor bathroom in Paris: The most recent of IKEA’s campaigns took place in Paris, around the Gare Saint Lazare. Based on the fact that half of the French people live in places with bathrooms smaller than 8sqm, IKEA exploited every inch of one of JCDecaux’s 8sqm panels to install a life sized bathroom on one side and a laundry room on the other side. To add interaction to the 3D panel, IKEA had 2 actors (at peak commuting times in the morning and the evening) stand on the panel pretending to perform everyday bathroom activities such as showering or shaving.   This is not the only campaign of the kind to have taken place in Paris. Over the summer, IKEA and Ubi Bene came up with an inventive campaign to encourage Parisians to take the eco-friendly car system “Autolib’” when going to their IKEA store. For the occasion, two Autolib’ stations were revamped into a bathroom and a kitchen. And to further strengthen the impact of the campaign, a large number of Autolib’ cars were dressed with cardboard boxes on their roofs to look as if the driver was coming back from a trip to IKEA.   An indoor garden in London: Taking the completely opposite angle in London, IKEA and JCDecaux UK took to the indoor environments of Waterloo and Liverpool rail stations, to show to commuters that they could ‘make more of their outdoor spaces’ – aka their gardens. A pop-up shop invited commuters to sit down and observe the wide range of outdoor solutions available in the IKEA store that could help them transform their outdoor space … The experiential activity was also supported by using the Transvision screens at Liverpool Street Station.   A billboard-fitted wardrobe in Vienna: In Austria, IKEA advertised the advantages of its flexible wardrobe system PAX by “dressing” a Gewista billboard with a PAX door that passers-by could slide open in order to discover IKEA’s great solutions that help fit anything into a wardrobe.   Storage units in the messy Shanghai metro In Shanghai, IKEA and JCDecaux China took to the hyper busy metro to advertise their stackable filing cabinets.  The metro columns were fully wrapped to take the shape of the boxes. Price tags were also part of the wrap, making each column look like an actual product display