Last week, Swedish furniture giant Ikea literally took over every possible media platform including high-flying drones to announce their first store opening in Bengaluru, meanwhile its competition Wakefit was also planning a clever campaign.
There’s an overlap of consumers segment between Ikea and Wakefit with a typical TG target of 25 to 34 years of age early jobbers or small families renting out homes.
Wakefit knew it’s a significant opportunity to talk to its customers by talking about Ikea’s launch. Hence, the idea germinated to create an ad that too in Swedish and publish it in a leading English daily. The ad had a QR code at the bottom, with the caption, Not from Sweden? Don't know Swedish? Please scan the QR code for the English version.
Synonymous with mattresses, Wakefit, founded by Ankit Garg and Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, now offers complete home solutions. The company wanted to create the top-of-mind awareness about its newly opened retail stores through the “Wakefit Trikea” campaign.
Laced with humour, the ad not only created buzz amidst media takeover by furniture giant Ikea’s launch but also managed to drive footfalls to its retail stores.
How idea was born
Talking exclusively with Storyboard18, Prateek Malpani, head of brand marketing, Wakefit asserts that although their company has been in Bengaluru for seven years, there has been low brand awareness when it comes to Wakefit’s recently launched home solutions retail stores. “The brief was never to tell people not to go to Ikea because of the traffic and weather conditions because that is a fact and people are very well aware about it. We used cultural insight of traffic and weather to create a contextual creative to start a conversation with a competitor that is launching its operations in the city and talk about ourselves,” he adds.
The agency
Created by Spring Marketing Capital, Wakefit ad used “tongue-in-cheek” humour to deliver its point, leverage the buzz created by Ikea’s launch and drive more people to its website where they can see how the company has expanded to offer furniture, décor and home solutions.
Arun Iyer, founder and creative partner, Spring Marketing Capital shares that there was a lot of conversation around Ikea’s entry in Bengaluru and it seemed like an interesting point in time for us to do something about it.
“This led to a series of brainstorming sessions and we have realised that it is a great opportunity to let the larger world know that Wakefit is also operating in the furniture space because Wakefit has been so deeply entrenched in the mattress category that the shift that the company has made in the furniture category is not as well established and widely known,” he notes.
Swedish touch
While the campaign’s humorous and irreverent tone amused many, it was Wakefit’s decision to do the ad in Swedish that grabbed eyeballs.
Iyer emphasised that they wanted to execute the campaign in an interesting yet dignified and familiar way which led to writing the ad in Swedish.
“There was a lot of discussion on how do we find someone who can write this in Swedish for us but later our in-house talent with some help of Google Translate got the job done. Then we decided to use a QR code that would like people to the Wakefit website. It was clever moment/topical marketing which created the buzz and chatter around the campaign and the brand,” he shares.
Iyer says that choosing print over digital to execute the campaign was also intentional. Primarily because it was restricted to one city somehow the impact of opening the newspaper and seeing something in Swedish would create a high level of curiosity.
"If we would have done this on Instagram people could miss it or think that wrong feed has popped for them. Scanning QR code had a lot more clutter break value in print than on digital as well,” he notes.
The brand
Backed by marquee investors such as US-based SIG, Verlinvest and Sequoia Capital India, the ‘Wakefit’ brand has been built largely on topical content. Right from its popular ‘Sleep Internship’ which was a property created by the company to series of Open Letters when the lockdown happened, the tone and manner of its topical content marketing has always been slightly irreverent.
Now, that it is taking a big leap of becoming a complete home solutions company selling through its own online portal, popular online marketplaces, and also across its 10 retail stores it is also looking to take its communication strategy a notch up.
“Our communication is hinged on 'trusted convenience home solutions provider' and that has been the larger narrative. Now our current focus is to drive footfalls to our retail stores across cities such as Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Lucknow and get data on how people are reacting to our collection,” says Wakefit’s Malpani, before he signs off, not in Swedish.
(Edited by : Sangam Singh)
