Ikea have released their brand new innovative catalogue, the bookbook…
Ikea, the flat pack furniture emporium who sell a shed load of meatballs on the side, are rolling back the years with their not so ground-breaking catalogue design, the paper book! Everywhere else you look, we are told to “find our full range online” or to “browse our online catalogue”. Of course in today’s modern world, this is in no way negative. But from time to time, it is necessary to live in the physical world and act outside of the intangible.
Like Argos, Ikea are sticking with a more traditional, paper catalogue which acts much like a book, or as they call it “the bookbook”. You can flick between pages with your fingers and fold the corner to bookmark a page, you can roll it up and stick it in your back pocket or use it as a coaster to protect your antique coffee table. However you decide to use this catalogue, we can be certain of one thing, it will always be more than multiple pages bound together by cheap glue.
Ikea market their catalogue ingeniously by emulating that of the iPad. The parody is obvious from the start, as we are told about the catalogues “eternal battery life” and “tactical touch technology which you can actually feel”, whilst being totally free of lag “no matter how fast you scroll”. This may seem like simple advertising, but Ikea are experiencing some serious success as the YouTube video has been viewed over 10 million times since being published on the 3rd September (today being the 10th). The important aspect of the video is its ability to interest the viewer, who then spreads the news. So the beauty of the catalogue campaign is its potential reach. You know about the 10 million or so viewers in just one week already, but over 1,500 stories had also been published online about the catalogue in just 24 hours. Now simply relate that to the amount of awareness and potential customers Ikea will receive, regardless of whether they use the physical catalogue or Ikea’s online one and either way, the Ikea brand is being viewed, shared and discussed over social media across the world.
This commercial is effectively a joke that Ikea shared with us, encouraging us to like Ikea more than we already do. It’s a joke that has made 10 million people laugh on YouTube and one that shows the evolving world of advertising and technology. Adverts aren’t always the hard sell they once were and even though technology is everywhere, in ground-breaking adverts and in every other profession, books clearly still have their place.