some sick IKEA collabs
‘IKEA Disobedients’ Madrid Manifesto
— IKEA delivers societies.
— IKEA is a purveyor of social structuration.
— 98% of the people depicted in the IKEA catalogue are young.
— 92% of them are blond.
— They all have some sort of family life.
— They are either children, or busy having children.
— Everything IKEA manufactures is aimed at turning the sphere of domesticity into a sunny, happy, apolitical space inhabited by contented, healthy, young people.
— The sense of a home or a household’s life, however, may also be constructed from day to day in quite different fashions.
— Not all of us are healthy.
— Not all of us are young.
— Not all of us are into having children.
Let me add to this..
— IKEA celebrates the ‘deviant’ of their business model only when it is culturally cool
— IKEA collaborative efforts have a self referencing irony that proves that they know the value of their fake exclusivity
I took a deep dive into the IKEA virtual museum and found a 2010 Swedish campaign that
‘showed that communication at IKEA is founded on insights into the everyday lives of the many, and sometimes different, people. The “Där livet händer/Where life happens” campaign showed everything from children moving between different parents following a divorce, to rehearsing rock bands and meetings between generations.’
Even IKEA product NAMES are contrived and prescriptive for the sake of FUN!
'According to the video, just a small team of people are responsible for naming anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 products a year, and all the names have to go through a checklist to meet IKEA’s standards. For a start, they have to be between four to 12 letters long, and it’s a bonus if it features the Swedish letters “å,” ‘ä” and “ö,” says the company’s product management leader Christina Berg-Overgard. They also can’t be a trademarked term or a family name, and of course, it has to be a “nice word.'
Adrianna - great series of images pulled from the IKEA virtual museum. I can always appreciate when a brand as global as them can still dedicate resources to art and supporting individual design creators. I've always wondered how their store ended up as a big-box, since I truly don't associate them with the typical big-box retailer experience.
ReplyDeleteI find the intersection of destination and domesticity so interesting with IKEA. IKEA is one of a select few brands that has managed to make big box stores work in Europe and the US while helping define domestic life cross-culturally. As a thought experiment, I'd love to see demographic data on customers (both those who window shop and spend money) to see how that tracks with their marketing strategies. They certainly have a homogenous brand of domesticity.
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