Q] IKEA has recently completed five years in India, but the brand communication’s tonality has followed the global approach with contemporary visuals, and minimalistic design. What is the reason for maintaining the global tonality instead of Indianizing the approach?
It’s important that we stay true to our brand blueprint, and how we want to be perceived. We have special guidelines regarding the tone of voice and visual identity, and try to maintain that as much as possible. What is interesting about this is that fun little twist we try to instil, because the home has to be a fun place.
We should also be simple, understandable, and honest in how we communicate; the human touch is also important. But we have to adjust to the audience, depending on the market. We constantly work on anything we need to add to our communication with insights, home visits, and different conversations with people in the market.
Q] How have Indian eccentricities changed your approach to marketing in this region?
We cannot compare Sweden to Japan or India because it’s a mature market and life at home in Sweden is something that we know naturally. The Japanese don’t even have a proper word for home. In the case of India, it was a bit surprising to me, but the love for the home, family, importance of kids and values are somehow closer to the far away Sweden. Coming to India and learning about this Indian way of welcoming was impressive. That is why we changed the positioning to Ghar Aajao, as it really stood out as soon as I heard somebody say it. I think that’s uniquely Indian, and one of the most beautiful things you have in your country.
Q] What is the target audience of the brand in India, and which campaigns generate the highest ROI?
We’re for the many, but we’re not for everyone. We target families with children – the people who benefit the most from a better home right now, and that’s the biggest focus that we have. When it comes to income levels, the big middle class would probably be the best target for us to try and reach out to.
Campaigns that create some tractions are usually the ones that talk about a fantastic price. Price and value for money are things that work well in India. We hit a peak when we talk about the affordability of the products, and we try to keep building on that.
Q] Please share the thought behind the concept, ‘A little IKEA makes everything new,’ and the promotional outlook for this festive campaign.
The insight behind this is based on this year’s festive season. You can’t avoid it. It’s a season where people go all out – they shop and indulge. We thought we should encourage people to buy something small that’s not too tough on the wallet. You don’t need to buy a lot to make your home feel new this Diwali and that is our core idea, as opposed to what advertisers always say, ‘buy more.’
It’s also connected to reusing what you have, storing what you use, and bringing it out again the next year. We wanted to play with the Indian shopping craze. Working with Leo Burnett was special, as their creativity is at a new level when it comes to refining things.
Q] What is the brand’s media plan and how do you drive footfall to your offline stores and get consumers to the IKEA experience?
We have an omnichannel focus, and it’s about driving people to where they prefer, whenever, and wherever they want to shop. We have the Big Blue Box for a full day out, and also small access store. We also have the app, online, and remote selling points where we can sell over the phone. The media plan needs to be specific to each market.
It’s much like planning for Belgium, Germany, and Austria at the same time because we have Mumbai, Hyderabad, and the Bangalore markets, and all of them are different. We try to optimize the channels based on research and what has worked before. Based on those learnings we boost some channels and remove some. In a market like Mumbai, out-of-home is important, but even regional TV works well. In Hyderabad, we focus much more on TV, Radio, and Digital channels, while Bangalore is somewhere in the middle.
Q] The consumer journey is not linear anymore. How do you measure these metrics and trace the journey of Digital hybrids?
If we look into customer experience mapping, it’s a spider web these days, it’s not linear, but a lot of people are searching online. If it’s a big purchase, we see them coming to our stores. For smaller purchases, we don’t see much hesitation, they’re actually used to buying online without seeing and touching. It’s quite difficult to get the right measures, and we are trying to find more accurate ways of measurement.
However, being consistent in communication, having the same message, product, and price, and then showcasing them on social media for all to see, only for consumers to find these products immediately upon entering the store, makes it easy for them to buy.
Q] Please share a few insights on your research process, and learnings on how Indians utilize their space and how you integrate those quirks into the market communications.
Apart from the research we get from our partners, we do home visits in every market each year, extensively. We visit people who know about us and also those who do not know about us. We can learn how they live, how they want to live, and their needs, and understand what can we do to solve them. We also talk about communication manners. How do we reach them? How do they know about us? So, we have extensive interviews with people whom we visit, and we put them all together. Finally, the insights that we get are valuable for us to build our plans. Based on them, we go back and identify barriers that we need to overcome from a communication point of view.
