Ikea wins big award for small space marketing

LOS ANGELES — Ikea has been named "best small space solution" by The Intelligence Group, a consumer insights firm, publisher of the Cassandra Report, which highlights youth trends and behavior.



Ikea was one of the winners of the group's first Cass Awards, which were awarded to companies and brands that best reached Generation Y through their marketing efforts last year.

Ikea showed young, broke city dwellers how to make the most of small spaces by cramming the contents of an entire warehouse into a 10.5 x 8.8 cm web banner. Despite its small size, the resultant banner was patently shoppable and the retailer turned the once-thought-arbitrary sidebar web banner into a functional, useful, and even enjoyable interactive application. Users could “browse” the banner by department, scroll over its miniscule thumbnail images to enlarge them, and click to be redirected to a product’s page for immediate purchase. Ikea planted the banner on the real estate sections of community websites, targeting the host of urbanites in search of serviceable studios and converted 1BRs.

“This is an exciting time for the advertising industry as so many brands are constantly breaking new ground in their efforts to engage elusive young consumers” said Joe Kessler, president, The Intelligence Group. “We felt that it would be worthwhile to take a step back and bookmark some of the cutting edge campaigns that are leading the way by putting their understanding of young consumers into play in daring and unexpected ways. The best activations have two important characteristics in common -- each one is true to the brand or product it represents, and each displays an element of technology innovation or creative expression we hadn't seen before.”