You might not love Ikea’s furniture, but you can’t deny that Ikea’s marketing strategy is nothing but brilliant: a cutting-edge blend of mobile, emerging technologies and social media.

Mobile Augmented Reality App
You see something, you like it. You don’t buy it! Why? The most common reason is that you can’t picture it in your own house. Visual memory is not a common talent, planning by the sheer power of imagination is even rarer.

The Ikea mobile application, dubbed Portable Interior Planner, is your new bionic eye. With a very clean and easy-to-use interface, it gives customers the ability to see exactly how the new designs will look in their home. And to do this, it uses mobile augmented reality features.

Here’s how it works:

• The application has images of the new PS line. Choose a product, select “Take a Picture” and aim the camera of the phone where you’re planning to place the new piece of furniture.
• When you do so, the piece of furniture is superimposed on top of the room viewed through the camera. Furniture pieces are also scaled to size, so that the proportions of the piece are not distorted.By using keys on the handset, you can move the piece of furniture in different directions.
• Once you’re happy with the result, you can use the camera to take a picture of the scene. The photo can either be saved on the phone, or sent via MMS directly from within the application.

For the German launch of the PS line, Ikea distributed the mobile application in three ways:

1. In-store through posters urging customers to send a free text message to receive a link to download the application.
2. On the Ikea website
3. Through Bluetooth pillars installed in certain stores.

Mobile Coupons and Loyalty Programs
How do you keep customers informed, improve their lifetime value and loyalty? Run a monthly contest, offer something valuable as a prize, get your customers to opt-in, and then form a community of loyal members who recieve exclusive promos.

That’s the gist of Ikea’s Seattle store marketing strategy in the last six months: consumers can enter for a chance to win the $500 Ikea gift card by texting the keyword “winner” to an Ikea short code.  When they first do so, they’re asked to enroll in Ikea Mobile, the retailer’s free program that provides alerts and special deals. Every month Ikea texts its members a coupon code, which they can redeem to the Mobile kiosk at the Seattle store.
Guess a number of redemptions? More than 15,000 to date!

Facebook Photo Tagging Contest

The story has gone viral and is already a social media case study!

Advertising agency Forsman and Bodenfors was engaged by Ikea, to create a special launch campaign for a new store in Malmo. The agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Over a two-week period, it uploaded images from of Ikea showrooms to his Facebook photo album, and the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it.

Pure creative genius at work!