MARKETING TO WOMEN

Ikea found a really nice way to launch it’s first store in NY: it placed gigantic pop up Ikea room settings throughout the city. The cardboard boxes contained complete interiors, obviously furnished with IKEA stuff. Here’s one that was placed on Cadman Plaza.

They also built massive sculptures of local landmarks like the Empire State Buiding or Brooklyn Bridge out of more than 1000 Ikea cardboard boxes.

Even though most comments on the internet on this campaign were very positive, some people are critical. Comments like: I ” Ikea’s great and all, but it’s frustrating to shop in a store where bedspreads are called “Dahlbrugg” and bookshelves “Lenkii” or some such thing, instead of being labelled what they are.” are merely funny, but serious there are also more serious objections such as worries about the weekend traffic jams to the store. This shows once more that advertisers cannot expect discussions to be restricted to the campaign that’s out there. And that means a whole new attitude towards consumers; not just being nice on the marketing side and then forgetting about the client when he or she is asking for service.

Something that Justien Marseille said last week at the VEA conference What women want struck me. She described the world as an ever more feminin place, and according to her one thing that companies would have to change is not to sell a product to a consumer, but to sell a relationship. That’s typically something that women are looking for. I believe Marseille is so right when she says that the old paradigm of hard product selling is so outdated. It feels kind of wrong when a company is really trying to get you in as a customer, and then afterwards treats you as a merely annoying insect. Unfortunately, that is still harsh reality. Most companies are still trying to trick people into a certain purchase only to ignore them afterwards. That doesn’t go down well with women though.