Ikea built its latest ad campaign into Instagram

Ikea is promoting its latest furniture collection with an Instagram ad campaign, using the image-sharing network as a sort of virtual catalog. The Swedish retailer’s PS 2014 collection features colorful furnishings and home accessories for “modern living” (read as: made for tiny apartments and easy to transport on the subway), including lightweight floor lamps, wardrobes, and shelving units, as well as an expanding lamp that looks a little like the Death Star. So, in keeping with the times, Ikea’s Russian division hired ad agency Instinct to build an ad campaign within Instagram.

The interactive “website,” which only functions properly on a smartphone, is housed under the username ikea_ps_2014. Each of the six images acts as a catalog for a different subset of the collection—benches, tables, storage, light, textiles, and ideas—and each image is tagged with an Instagram account for the corresponding product.

It’s a cool concept, but a Debbie Downer might point out that it also serves to remind us that every social network is nothing more than an advertiser’s playground.

Image via ikea_ps_2014/Instagram