2021 Silver Best Sustainability Campaign

Agency: RAPP

Client: IKEA

Campaign Name: IKEA The Sustainable Everyday

Campaign Overview

To encourage IKEA customers to live more sustainable lives at home and achieve a goal of 70 million sustainable changes in the UK by the end of 2021 was no mean feat: one change per UK individual, an ambitious target that would drive real change.

Strategy

As a leading furniture retailer it's IKEA's responsibility to protect the planet. The company committed to a global ambition to “inspire and enable 1 billion people to live more sustainably” by 2030.

But there's a fundamental dilemma for big retail brands advocating sustainability.

If IKEA truly wants customers to behave sustainably, it needs to give a helping hand that makes sustainable change easy, affordable and fun.

Its secret weapon was KNUFF Theory - Swedish for ‘nudges’ - which was applied to the entire customer marketing programme.

Customers were asked to extend the life of their existing IKEA products before replacing them. To take shorter showers and cook pasta to perfection while streaming its Ultimate House Music playlists. They were even asked to consider lower-carbon holidays.

All of these nudges sought to KNUFF customers to think more sustainably - and also meant reworking IKEA.com's UX and filters.

Creativity

IKEA’s creative got customers dancing as they saved energy at home or cut the carbon footprint of their travel. Data was woven in to provide motivating social-proof KNUFFs.

Spotify 'Playlists that Save The Planet' ensured customers wasted less energy by doing things around the house in a shorter time than usual. Each aspect linked to sustainable products to help customers cut down task duration.

Meanwhile, disassembly instructions encouraged people not to waste products they already had and to re-use them instead.

Customers were also motivated to make easy switches with the Choices for Change tracker.

At the sweet-spot of data and creativity, it showed customers the collective impact of their small sustainable actions on the planet, like the number of veggie balls eaten with only 6% of the carbon footprint of a meatball.

In addition, they were demonstrated how much money could be saved through individual sustainable switches, for example £54.68 per year by switching from tumble dryer to drying racks.

Results

Customers are already more aware of sustainability through IKEA’s comms, which enjoyed an increased open rate of 6%.

Some 65% of recipients engaged further with sustainability and family perception of the brand's positive impact also increased 3.4% year-on-year.

Actions are already speaking louder than words: KNUFFing has laddered up to 48m sustainable actions so far. For instance, 12,000 households have switched to sustainable energy, saving 136,200 tonnes of CO2.

Customers are buying more thoughtfully: sustainable product revenue has outstripped that of non-sustainable products, while 71% of IKEA Family customers have put sustainable items in their basket when transacting - and increased spend on sustainable products by 17% year-on-year, buying a total of 37 million sustainable items.

Average order value of more sustainable products rose by 8% during the campaign, compared to falling order values of some other, less sustainable products

The Team

RAPP - Al Mackie, Chief Creative Officer - Jason Cascarina, Deputy Executive Creative Director - Alice Kenyon, Senior Acount Manager - Ellie Garden, Campaign Executive - Mischa Hunt, Senior Project Manager - Jay Packham, Associate Creative Director - Ian Cochran, Associate Creative Director - Leo Mack, Designer - Hiten Bhatt, Head of Design - Stephanie Bryan-Kinns, Middleweight Designer - Durrelle Gregory, Senior Designer - Paul Thomas, Developer - Tom Hughes, Copywriter - Tom Powell, Head of Content - Jade Thompson, Copywriter - Caroline Garnar, Copywriter - James Marsden, Senior Data Scientist - Charlotte Tullet, Associate Strategy Director - Daybe Talbot, Strategy Director - Michael Baker, Data Scientist

Contributors