I hate doing this, but since I was forced to see BBH’s new campaign for IKEA – ‘Improve your private life’, I couldn’t help but feel sorry about how the world of advertising just regressed by 5 years. I am a believer in subtle humour and real stories. True, a large part of people’s happiness is dependent on their sex lives, so why not just say ‘sex’? Making the flimsy bed move to find out the husband is actually sleeping is a failed attempt at what I would called ‘poorly-tried-and-obviously-failed-humour’.

Here is the ad that I will not spend too much time or energy describing:

You might have noticed the same ‘shelf guru’ who has re-emerged as lead actor from BBH’s Book Book Video – the one that leveraged on tremendous ‘inspiration’ (read: most likely copied) from Sun Pharma’s ad.

But none of that annoys me as much as how ‘fake’ this whole set-up is. These are the top 3 Fake things about this video:

1) The fake love between the two people in the relationship (& the forced inter-racial set-up)

2) The forced IKEA products that come out of everywhere

3) Of-course, the forced humour all along the video

All the great things that marketers have been doing about ‘telling genuine and real stories’ just went down the drain with the force-everything-ad for IKEA.

I just want to put this out there in the world – Yes, I will still continue to shop at IKEA & no, that will have nothing to do with this ad.