Bleed and Ikea Norway committed to develop an attitude campaign that would motivate the staff, without them having to attend a two-hour lecture that they would probably forget soon afterwards. We wanted to create a new service culture in Norway.
The purpose was to create a campaign that would become a natural part of the normal working day, a campaign with a long shelf life that would generate an atmosphere of humor, fun and happiness throughout the working day. The main goal: Getting the staff to do a better job both in relation to each other and the customers, and thereby make Ikea the world´s friendliest and best place to shop.
We decided to create a character that "everyone likes", and that generates strong concepts and ideas that people will respond to -- a cartoon figure communicating Ikea´s brand values and incorporating this with mixed "happy" messages that would brighten employees working day. This was intended to colour and influence customers´ experience and perception of employees. The figure -- Braco -- was designed with the intention of being likeable to everybody and a "family friendly rebel" upholding the right Ikea attitude and values.
To launch the campaign we advertised a job vacancy in Ikea warehouses seeking a "Service Guru" who had enormous knowledge of Ikea and who was a fantastic motivator of his fellow employees. Some of the essential criteria were worded in such a way that no real person could actually apply for the position. Braco was then introduced by presenting a "position taken" poster that also introduced the concept and the purpose of the campaign.
Once Braco had been introduced, he became more commonly seen and showed up in sticker form at various places employees regularly frequent and could easily see him. These stickers involved Braco communicating messages that were customized to suit the different employee areas.
The campaign also involved pocket notes with useful phone lists, and service goal sentences were also handed to all employees functioning as reminders. A guide was also developed to be given to employees for putting up messages on their information wall. This gives the warehouses the opportunity to use the campaign when they have specific needs to communicate to each other.