IKEA turns its tongue-twisting product names into a test

IKEA has turned one of its most recognisable brand quirks into a Back-to-School TikTok challenge, asking people to prove they can pronounce its famously tricky Swedish product names.

Created by Ogilvy Amsterdam, The Swedish Test taps into the voice-recognition challenges that have become a familiar TikTok format.

Players start with names such as LACK and BILLY before progressing to harder tests including SKÄMTSKÅL, with successful attempts increasing their chance of winning an IKEA gift card.

IKEA’s naming system began when founder Ingvar Kamprad, who had dyslexia, found names easier to remember than product codes. Decades later, those Scandinavian names have become as distinctive as the furniture itself.

Carla Klumpenaar, general manager, marketing, communication and interior design at IKEA UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Oman, said: “We wanted to bring a sense of joy and lightness to the routine.”

Ogilvy Amsterdam executive creative directors Nicolás López and Fernando Montero said: “We wanted to challenge that status quo, and the results speak for themselves: IKEA is getting people to spend an average of over two minutes interacting with the brand, having fun trying to pronounce their products.”

The activation follows IKEA’s recent clutter billboards in Sweden, another campaign that turns an everyday truth about the brand into the creative mechanism itself.

Vaseline recently embraced mispronunciation after a creator accidentally renamed the brand “Baseline”.

Subscribe to the famous newsletter and get the best campaigns in your inbox