How does Ikea launch in a new country, where the audience thinks they already know the brand? With an allen key, of course, and the ‘Ikea, everywhere’ campaign.
Last year, London-based international research agency Kantar Millward Brown listed Ikea as the most valuable furniture retailer in the world and the sixth most valuable retailer overall on its “Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2025” list.
Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation, headquartered in Washington, DC, ranked the Swedish furniture store ninth on its “Top 50 Global Retailers” list.
Impressive. But we all know Ikea’s real 2025 milestone was launching in Aotearoa.
The physical store in Auckland was a decade in the planning, but Ikea wanted to establish the brand right across New Zealand. A ‘market blitz’ put Ikea everywhere, all at once.
“‘Ikea, everywhere’ was all about welcoming Kiwis into the world of Ikea and really making the brand feel completely at home in New Zealand,” says Kirsten Hasler, CMO of Ikea Australia & NZ.
“We wanted to show what it looks like for a global brand to have a distinctly local flavour.
“From the outset, the campaign was designed to be impossible to miss.”
Hasler says that meant incorporating instantly recognisable brand icons, such as the blue ‘Frakta’ bag, into almost all marketing channels – particularly the high-impact, social media platforms.
All go on all channels
The campaign was developed in partnership with Australian agency Havas Host, along with the NZ branch of WPP Media’s Mindshare. It included locally focused OOH advertising, a full takeover of Go Media’s digital screens and pop-up activations in Christchurch and Wellington. TV was also part of the schedule, with the ‘Swede As’ road trip created by Mindshare in partnership with TVNZ. Seven Sharp hosts travelled the country setting up Ikea furniture in iconic spots.
Local insights came via years of research, including the Life at Home Report – produced after in-person visits to 500 New Zealand homes. Detailed focus group work helped Ikea understand how the brand could add value to Kiwis’ lives.
“We found a relatively high awareness of Ikea when prompted, but top-of-mind awareness of Ikea as a home furnishing retailer was quite low,” says Hasler.
“Obviously, Kiwis are generally well-travelled, so much of the awareness around brand familiarity came from people having visited Ikea stores in different countries, and even through people asking family members to bring Ikea products over.
“In a local context, though, there were some misconceptions around the brand. Most of these came down to parallel imports or brand importers. There was this feeling that Ikea might be a bit overpriced or not really suited to the local market, which is something that we have to overcome.”
Another challenge was the notion that Kiwi consumers would be the ‘poor cousins’ when it came to the range of products available.
“Kiwis are used to compromising when it comes to the local offering from overseas retailers, so another misconception was the view that New Zealand would get a watered-down ‘Ikea-lite’ version, which is definitely not the case.
“Equally important to dispel were concerns around accessibility. So many global brands come into New Zealand and open a physical store in one of the major centres, with an online offering very much second thought, if at all.
“Central to the ‘Ikea, everywhere’ campaign was the message that Ikea was going to launch both ecommerce online shopping nationwide and the physical store simultaneously. Otherwise, we risked appearing inaccessible to the 66% of Kiwis who live outside of Auckland. So, yeah, it was really focused on three tenets: affordability, accessibility and an omni-channel shopping experience.”
The ‘Swede As’ road trip saw Ikea room set-ups pop up in iconic spots around the motu.
Local partnerships
Underpinning the marketing campaign was the very real desire to build relationships with local stakeholders.
“Of course, we can go and say that we are available to all of New Zealand, but without local partners who were willing to support that assertion, it wouldn’t have been possible. So establishing and maintaining those all-important relationships was a big priority from the beginning.
“Take the relationship with Mainfreight, which has allowed us to integrate into their business and vice versa. They’ve put in the hard work to not only be ready to deliver all these products all over the country but also in establishing a nationwide network of 29 pick-up points – that only happens with a high level of co-operation and trust.”
So is ‘Ikea, everywhere’ continuing to deliver, post launch?
“Obviously, from a marketing point of view, we know that the longer you keep a campaign in market with a message, the more effective it is. Once you notice something, you notice it more and more. So the media strategy was never going to be ‘launch and exit’, but rather a sustained media presence and continued work with our partners at Mindshare to keep emphasising both the brand messaging and the commercial messaging.
“I am happy to say the strategy is working, with the numbers having been exceeded significantly. Over the first couple of days, we had a huge amount of visitors in the store. On the first Sunday alone, we had almost 30,000 visitors, and that is still being maintained – on average, we’re getting about 15,000 visitors on weekends, which is amazing. Even more pleasing, in the first month, we had almost two million visitors online.”
Such is the success of the campaign here, Hasler says there’s even been talk of adapting it to the Australian market to reinvigorate brand interest as Ikea moves into its 51st year across the ditch.
This story comes from NZ Marketing magazine issue 86, March-May 2026. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year for just $50 (including delivery) if you autorenew.
Essential marketing intelligence. Don’t miss it.
