IKEA GLOBAL
Exploring the role of home in mental wellbeing
The challenge
As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic at different rates, our challenge was to help IKEA build on seven years of thought-leadership into life at home in a way that felt relevant to the world’s recovery.
So, harnessing the growing momentum in deeply understanding life at home within IKEA, we took a brand new approach to mapping the issues that mattered to customers and co-workers and landed on the most important conversation to join and lead – the connection between people’s homes and their mental wellbeing.
As this is a global report, the biggest job to do was to land the benefits of the work with IKEA markets and internal stakeholders. So, we embarked on an iterative engagement programme involving Jesper Brodin, IKEA CEO, and Marcus Engman, IKEA Chief Creative Officer, to help shape our approach to both the report and to communicating it.
What we did:
- Insight and strategy
- Creative concept
- Design system
- Hero film and production
- Campaign microsite
- Social content series
- Influencer direct mailer
- Bespoke magazine
- Shopper activation
- Internal comms
- Report writing and design
Our approach
We assembled a team of qualitative and quantitative research partners to ask over 34,000 people globally to share their experiences of mental wellbeing at home. These insights shaped the content of our report and creative communications platform: Balance Starts at Home.
For the first time in the Life at Home Report’s history, we delivered a bespoke editorial-led magazine alongside a traditional report format. It explores the insights in a totally new way and gives voice to IKEA experts, knowledgeable influencers and everyday people side-by-side. In another first, we were able to engage the millions-strong IKEA Family network of global customers and promote the project on IKEA.com.
We also produced a huge range of creative assets and explanatory toolkits for IKEA global channels and to inspire local market teams.
Hero film
To give the research more immediacy and emotional resonance, we created a hero film which emphasised the themes from the report. Our participants from the UK, United States, France and China shared their real stories from the past 12 months, while remote-shooting allowed us a glimpse into their home life.
Instagram content series: The sides of home
We created an Instagram story series featuring five original films that juxtapose positive and negative experiences of mental wellbeing at home – the sides of home. The interactive content invites the user to choose their own side and explore related report findings.
Watch the future home filmInteractive online report
We completely reimagined the existing Life at Home microsite to deliver the findings of the report in more interactive and engaging ways.
We also created a more standard PDF report for ease of sharing and reference.
In-store ‘Better Home Balance’ trail for customers
Launching in early 2022, an in-store ‘treasure hunt’ style trail will allow IKEA Family members to explore the findings and advice from the report as they shop.
We developed a new design system for the Life at Home Report and campaign. The ‘house’ represents general Life at Home insights. The other graphic shapes express our theme of balanced mental wellbeing. The flexible graphic element are used to hold content, or to creatively convey specific messages.
“This is the fourth year we’ve worked with Given on the Life at Home Report, and they still bring as much energy and thoughtful creativity as they did in their very first pitch. Honestly, I would be at sea without this wonderful team - it’s a delight to collaborate on one of our most important initiatives!”
Katie McCrory
Global Communications Lead, IKEA