When approached by comedian Mark Malkoff about living in the IKEA Paramus, N.J., store for a week and documenting his adventures on the Web, IKEA brought in Ketchum to assess the PR potential. The idea was a good fit for IKEA’s "Home is the most important place in the world" brand campaign and Malkoff was already a known online personality. The Ketchum team advised the client to say yes and relinquish creative control to Malkoff.

 

Malkoff moved into an in-store "apartment" where he was allowed 24-hour access to film anything and everything, including interactions with customers and IKEA coworkers. Behind the scenes, Ketchum worked closely with IKEA to coordinate interviews, ensure clear messaging and anticipate possible issues. Over the course of the week, Malkoff's team edited and posted 25 short videos of his adventures on MarkLivesinIKEA.com and YouTube – showcasing everything from IKEA's furniture to its on-site restaurant in an entertaining, fun, positive light.

 

Ketchum helped IKEA and Malkoff take a great idea and give it maximum exposure, resulting in nearly 1.5 million webisode views, 15 million hits to MarkLivesinIKEA.com, and more than 382 million positive media impressions. Additionally, the N.J. store saw sales rise 5.5% and traffic to the IKEA Web site increased by 6.8% over the previous January. The campaign generated an ROI of 3.5 cents per 1,000 impressions (CPM = 0.035), causing the client to herald the program as "the most successful PR/marketing campaign in IKEA US history to date."

 

In 2009, PRWeek honored “Man Lives in IKEA” with the coveted Campaign of the Year Award as well as awards for Best Use of Online Media and Corporate Branding Campaign of the Year.