Headache:
How do you announce the grand opening of IKEA Brooklyn in the world's largest, most saturated media market where New Yorkers have seen every stunt, ignore most advertising, and are notoriously difficult to impress?
wow moment:
Use iconic IKEA's most recognizable asset, cardboard flatpack boxes, as the medium to reach New Yorkers where they live with a cardboard experience and guerrilla campaign that taps into authentic New York behavior of peeking into people's trash to see what they bought.
execution:
A full-scale studio apartment (20ft x 20ft) inside a 400 square foot IKEA box placed on Brooklyn streets, proving you could furnish an entire NYC apartment from IKEA.
Deployed "Guerrilla Garbage"—printed IKEA boxes with clever messaging and tossed them out with recycling across the city.
Messages played off nosy New York behavior, turning curiosity about neighbors' purchases into discovery moments about IKEA's arrival.
Every box became a billboard, every trash pile a conversation starter.
activation:
Highest grossing sales for store opening (3 months) in IKEA USA.
100,000,000 media impressions through news coverage and unpaid PR.
50,000 unique visits to cardboard experience.
here's the skinny:
Turn cardboard boxes into the entire media buy.
