If you’ve ever wanted to watch TV in a living room from TV, now’s your chance. IKEA recreated some of the most iconic living rooms from the beloved TV shows Friends, The Simpsons, and Stranger Things, using only its own furniture pieces. For a new promotional campaign called Real Life Series, IKEA’s United Arab Emirates–based campaign partnered with creative agency Publicis Spain to recreate famous TV show living rooms from a handful of television shows.
“We brought to life the iconic living rooms of the most beloved families of all times, through tons of furniture combinations in lots of different styles and sizes—and at affordable prices,” the company wrote.
IKEA Recreates TV Show Living Rooms in New Ad Campaign
In case you’ve ever found yourself wondering, “Where did Marge find that killer orange couch?” we’ve got the answer for you. Look no further than IKEA. The home goods store did all the work for its customers, compiling product lists for each room on its website.
There are some minor differences in the rooms, but the overall feel of each is there.
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In the Friends apartment, the French “Jouets” framed print is replaced with a vintage car poster and some of the decor differ, but the result stays very close to the original. IKEA’s Simpsons room is also strikingly similar, maintaining a cartoon-like feel with a mint-colored phone and lavender side table. It remains faithful right down to the askew picture frame above the couch and sparse decorations, but the lamps and TV set differed. The last room, a replica of Stranger Things’ creepy den, gets down to the details with Mala paint, Solvinden string lights, and its impressively accurate Tuvalie striped throw.
When asked by Adweek how the idea of recreating famous TV show living rooms first came about, chief creative officer of Publicis Spain Eduardo Marques said, “Pop culture is something everyone relates to. Advertising competes every day with what people love to watch, listen, read . . . there’s new content and entertainment coming out every minute, and we are addicted to it. Advertising needs to stop interrupting people and start becoming as fun and cool as what the entertainment world offers. Brands don’t need only buyers. First, they need fans. We need to jump more into pop culture and be part of what people love.”
In the same interview, Marques stated that they initially had a list of 60 TV shows. “Narrowing down to three was a tough decision to make. Our criteria was ‘scale’—how well-known the show is—and ‘iconic visual’—how easy it is for the audience to recognize the rooms.”
When asked if more TV show living rooms will be recreated in the future, Marques said, “We still have more to do, not just because this campaign brings us endless possibilities, but also because people are asking for it. The success of this campaign is beyond what we expected, so a lot of cool inquiries are coming from social media, and we’ll make that happen for them. Don’t you want to see more of it?”
We’re not sure what this says about the modernity of IKEA’s furniture lineup, but at the very least it achieved its intended objective: viral marketing.