Playing tag: Furniture brand goes viral on social network

Malmö, Sweden – Harnessing the viral power of social networking, furniture giant Ikea recently launched an innovative advertising campaign on Facebook that relies on the network’s popular photo-tagging tool.

Upon the opening of the new Ikea store in Malmö, the brand registered a Facebook account for its store manager, then uploaded 12 pictures of showrooms to his photo album. Facebook users were invited to tag items in the pictures with their name; the first person to tag a product won it. Each time a user tagged a picture, the news spread through the network, via users’ profile pages and news feeds, thus kick-starting a viral campaign.

The interactive campaign, created by Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors, allowed the brand to spread its name beyond the city, promoted by individual Facebook users – a clever and far cheaper promotional method than mailing paper catalogues.