Conversational Advertising

In Brian Solis newest blog post I am happy to see the comment by Stowe Boyd which cuts through all the hype of marketing and gets right to the point. Today in class we were introduced to the newest of Ikea's marketing campaigns called America At Home. This campaign is brilliant in it's consumer involvement angle. Interested web surfers or consumers as the marking industry calls them, are encouraged to actively participate in andvolunteer information. The consumer believes they are participating in a fun contest that both gives them an outlet for self expression and a chance to have your photo on the cover of a coffee table book. This is a brilliant way for Ikea to market itself to its customer because it gets them thinking about the inside of their home and encourages them to take photos and if a customer does not like their current interior and is thinking of getting some new furniture this is the perfect time to reach the customer because this social media project has the consumers really evaluate their home environment. From a Social Media PR perspective This campaign is great because it gets potential customers networking on a site that Ikea can directly market to and control the course of discussion. Hypothetically the marketing information derived from millions of photos taken of customer's living rooms and bedrooms could be valuable to a huge Swedish furniture company. If all else fails at least Ikea hopes to sell a coffee table to everyone who gets the book.
Compared to the ideals in Brian Solis's book Ikea's campaign is better than most but not the Utopian experiment in marketing described by Solis. Ikea's s campaign is not totally free form like the social media described by Solis, Ikea guides its participants with daily assignments to keep things flowing with some structure, and in the end Ikea makes the final decision as to who wins the contest.
Ikea's nest commercial strategy focuses on the slogan "Home is the most important place on earth." is pure genius. It gets customers thinking about Ikea products, 'the stuff in my house,'and gets them thinking, 'this stuff is not worthy of the most important place on earth' and finally the ad-execs hope the conversation will turn to, 'I need some new stuff!' I think the concept is great because it gets the customers focused on their home and if the customer finds a problem with their interior Ikea has the solution. In the UK Ikea is using a campaign similar to their my America at home, obviously with a different name, called Not going anywhere. Although one could argue that the similarities of UK to America outnumber the differences the fact is that the popular cultures of both are vastly different. This factors into their campaign and the UK site seems like a real grass roots movement and does not overtly mention Ikea. If i had not been told this was a marketing site I would have thought that this was some quirky site for people really into their homes.