The year 2021 represented IKEA’s ‘leap year of sustainability,’ with all brand-layer communications having a mandate to incorporate and bring to the forefront their belief and value in sustainability. IKEA’s value in sustainability extends from material sourcing to product manufacturing, and even to giving their pieces a
new life. IKEA is always looking for ways to reduce environmental impact and provide
consumers with tools to do the same.

Instead of encouraging people to buy new, they showed the world how to upcycle their old IKEA furniture. They created official instructions for how to hack some of IKEA’s most iconic pieces, giving them new life and saving them from the landfill: Repurposeful Instructions. They launched 12 sets of Instructions for download and promoted them across OLV, OOH/DOOH, Social, Digital, Owned channels, and PR efforts.

With the launch of Repurposeful Instructions, IKEA did something radical to reduce its environmental impact. Instead of encouraging people to buy new, they showed the world how to upcycle their old IKEA furniture. They created official instructions on how to hack some of IKEA’s most iconic pieces, giving them new life and saving them from the landfill.

They created 12 sets of Repurposeful Instructions for popular IKEA products, published for download at IKEA.ca/Repurposeful. Products featured included a birdhouse made from BLANDA MATT salad bowls, a terrarium made from FABRIKOR glass cabinets, a beehive made from IVAR cabinets and a hanging garden made from IKEA’s famous FRAKTA blue shopping bags. Each instruction set indicates a recommended skill level, with most of the projects being suitable for beginners.

The IKEA instruction manual is an iconic visual system known the world over. They took advantage of that universality, expanding the infographic design language, to make these upcycling projects accessible to all.

They worked with IKEA’s experts, an independent furniture designer and specialists like beekeepers and ornithologists to ensure the quality, durability and feasibility of each upcycling project. Importantly, each instruction manual showed how to complete the project with readily accessible home tools and materials.

The overall look and feel of the campaign was intended to evoke the handcrafted and natural-world inspiration for the campaign, reflecting the ethos of the brief and IKEA’s commitment to sustainability.

Repurposeful Instructions saw a 6% lift in consumer belief in the brand’s positive impact on the environment, a 40% increase in site visitation, and a 75% increase in time spent on site. The campaign surpassed its target by 37% for downloads of the instructions from the IKEA website.

They also saw a 32% increase in the sales of IKEA’s sustainable products.