Tag: Moscow

Ikea PS 2014 Instagram Website

You open Instagram and land on Ikea_ps_2014. The grid does not look like a typical brand feed. Each tile behaves like a navigation button. Benches. Tables. Storage. You tap a category image, reveal hidden tags, and jump straight into product views. Instagram becomes the website.

The idea. A catalog built inside Instagram

Ikea has made a name for itself as a trustworthy and affordable source of stylish home decor. In Russia, to promote the PS 2014 collection, Ikea teams up with Moscow-based agency Instinct to approach Instagram in an entirely new way.

How it works. Categories in the grid, products in the tags

The Ikea_ps_2014 Instagram account serves as the campaign website. Each post represents a product category like benches or tables. When you tap a category image, hidden tags reveal “links” to the products within that category.

Here, “hidden tags” are simply Instagram photo tags used as tap targets, so navigation stays inside native Instagram behavior.

Every one of the 34 items in the collection also receives its own Instagram account. For example ps_laptop_station and ps_side_table.

The real question is whether you can turn a platform habit into structured product discovery without forcing people out of the app.

In consumer brands promoting a collection across many items, this pattern uses a social grid as a lightweight category tree.

Why it matters. An app used beyond its intended design

The Instagram app is certainly never meant to be an Ikea catalog website. The mechanism is simple: category posts behave like menu tiles, and tags behave like links, so thumbs do what they already do in Instagram. That is why the experience feels like browsing, not “clicking out”. This is worth copying when the native UI can carry the journey end-to-end, not when you need heavy comparison, configuration, or checkout.

Extractable takeaway: If a platform already has a grid, a tag system, and a tap habit, you can repurpose those primitives into navigation and keep discovery inside one familiar surface.

Where it connects. Earlier “feed as experience” examples

Earlier this year, Mazda and JWT Canada turned the car-maker’s Instagram feed into an interactive road trip, replacing specs with images and videos that followed the vehicle on an epic adventure. Over the course of four months, the campaign “Long Drive Home” helped grow Mazda Canada’s Instagram following by more than 300%.

Similarly, the Toronto Silent Film Festival turned its feed tsff2014 on its side, creating an interactive timeline complete with factoids and video clips to celebrate Charlie Chaplin’s 100 years on film.

What to copy from this build

  • Start with categories. Treat the grid as a menu so users can self-select a path.
  • Use tags as links. Turn existing tap targets into jumps to deeper product views.
  • Keep the journey native. Let the platform’s follow, view, and tag behaviors do the work.
  • Design for scan first. Make each tile legible as navigation, not just as content.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the Ikea PS 2014 Instagram website?

A campaign that uses an Instagram account as a navigable catalog. Grid posts act as categories, and photo tags act as links to product accounts.

How do people navigate it?

Users tap category images in the grid, reveal the photo tags, and jump to specific product pages inside Instagram.

What is the key execution detail?

Each PS 2014 product gets its own Instagram account, so exploration happens via Instagram’s native follow, view, and tag behaviors.

Why does this work on mobile?

It turns a familiar mobile habit, browsing a feed, into structured discovery without forcing users into a new interface.

What is the transferable pattern?

Treat platform constraints as UI elements. Build navigation out of what the platform already provides instead of fighting it.

Drone-vertising: Wokker and Cup Noodles

Unmanned aircraft have been used to carry out military strikes, to film weddings, and are also being explored for product delivery from companies like Amazon, Netflix, Francesco’s Pizzeria and Flower Delivery Express.

Until the legalities of commercial use are cleared up by local governments, companies in Russia and Brazil go ahead with what are described as early drone-vertising campaigns. Drone-vertising is using drones as moving media, either by flying banners through high-attention locations or by staging a delivery moment that doubles as a filmed ad.

Airspace as a new media channel

The mechanism is straightforward. Put a message or a product on a drone. Fly it where the audience is already looking. Capture the moment on video so the stunt can travel beyond the people who witnessed it live. Because the drone enters an uninvited sightline, it creates surprise, which is why the filmed moment gets retold and replayed.

In dense urban districts where attention is scarce, brands keep searching for formats that create surprise without requiring new screen time.

The real question is whether the brand promise stays clear when the novelty fades, or whether the drone becomes the headline and the product becomes the footnote.

Russia

As ordinary advertising channels continue to be congested, Russian creative agency Hungry Boys uses drones to advertise noodle company Wokker.

Wokker banners are attached to drones and flown around high-rise business buildings in Moscow’s financial district, drawing the attention of office workers as the drones pass windows. The campaign is described as driving deliveries in the targeted area up by 40%.

Brazil

Cup Noodles, the instant ramen noodles snack from Nissin-Ajinomoto, is promoted in Brazil with drones dressed as cows, chickens, corn cobs and shrimps. A two-and-a-half minute film created for the brand’s online campaign uses drones to take Cup Noodles to surfers, skateboarders and highline walkers as they practise their sport.

Why drone-vertising gets noticed

This format works because it breaks the normal media contract. People do not expect ads to appear outside their window, and they do not expect “delivery” to arrive from above. The novelty is doing most of the work. The brand then benefits from the retelling, because the story is easy to summarise and the footage is inherently watchable. Drone-vertising is only worth doing when the brand meaning is unmistakable and the safety story is boring.

Extractable takeaway: If you are betting on a new attention surface, make the idea legible in one glance and one sentence. The stunt must communicate the category benefit instantly, otherwise the drone becomes the headline and the brand becomes a footnote.

Rules worth stealing before you fly ads

  • Target a context with a clear “why now”. Wokker links to lunch-time office hunger. Cup Noodles links to being hungry while out doing sport.
  • Design for cameras as well as eyeballs. You need a clean visual read at distance, plus a story that survives reposting.
  • Keep the stunt safe and bounded. The moment you look reckless, the conversation turns from clever to irresponsible.
  • Prove impact carefully. If you cite uplift, be ready to explain what changed, where, and for how long.

A few fast answers before you act

What is drone-vertising?

It is using drones as moving media. Either by flying banners through high-attention locations or by staging a delivery moment that doubles as a filmed ad.

Why does it work particularly well near offices or public hotspots?

Because the audience is concentrated and the environment is predictable. A drone appearing in a controlled corridor creates surprise without needing people to opt in.

What is the biggest brand risk?

Safety and permission. If the flight looks uncontrolled or disruptive, attention quickly becomes negative and the brand is blamed for the intrusion.

How do you keep the idea from becoming “tech for tech’s sake”?

Tie the drone to a simple product truth that the audience recognises instantly, like lunch delivery urgency or on-the-go convenience, then make that truth the focus of the footage.

What should you measure before you claim “uplift”?

Define the exact area and time window the stunt covered, choose a baseline for comparison, and separate what changed because of the flight itself versus what changed because the filmed story spread online.

Nar Mobile: The Donor Cable

Azerbaijan is often described as having an unusually high incidence of children born with thalassemia, a hereditary blood disorder found across Mediterranean and nearby regions. The illness can require extensive blood transfusions for babies, and hospitals can struggle with shortages of donated blood.

So Y&R Moscow partnered with Azerbaijan cellular network Nar Mobile to re-imagine blood donation for a more digital daily life. Together they created a special wearable bracelet. A donor cable is a wearable charging cable that lets smartphone owners easily donate battery power to another person, and uses that act as a prompt to donate blood.

A wearable that makes donation tangible

The Donor Cable is a charging cable designed as a bracelet. When someone’s phone is dying, you can connect phone to phone and transfer power. The campaign then bridges that familiar “help” moment to a bigger one. Donate blood.

A donor cable is a physical connector that enables one person’s phone battery to recharge another device. The campaign uses that simple transfer as a metaphor for medical donation.

In mobile-first markets, translating “helping” into a familiar phone habit can lower friction for real-world donation behaviour.

Why this lands

This works because it does not start with guilt or abstract altruism. It starts with a small, instantly useful act between two people, then reframes that feeling of helping as the reason to do the harder, higher-impact thing. The bracelet format also keeps the reminder on you without requiring ongoing media.

Extractable takeaway: If you need behaviour change, start with a low-friction action that already feels rewarding, then create a clear bridge and an immediate next step to complete the “real” action while motivation is still warm.

What the numbers are trying to prove

The stronger strategic move here is the bridge from everyday phone help to real blood donation, not the bracelet itself.

The real question is whether the campaign makes the jump from symbolic transfer to actual donation immediate enough to convert intent into action.

Campaign coverage described the donor cables as an instant hit and reported an increase in blood donation of 335%. Treat that percentage as reported performance unless you have a primary measurement source to cite.

What behaviour-change teams should steal

  • Make the metaphor usable. A real action beats a slogan.
  • Put the reminder on the object. Wearable prompts outlast a media flight.
  • Collapse distance to conversion. Pair the story with an easy path to donate.
  • Keep the rule explainable. If it takes a paragraph to understand, it won’t spread.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the Donor Cable?

A wearable charging cable that lets one person transfer battery power to another phone. It is used as a behavioural prompt to encourage blood donation.

Why connect phone charging to blood donation?

The idea uses a clear analogy. A small, immediate “donation” of power makes the bigger act of donating blood feel more approachable, and more top-of-mind.

How does the bracelet change behaviour beyond awareness?

It creates a repeatable micro-action people can perform in public, then links that positive social moment to a concrete next step. Donate blood.

Is the 335% figure a verified metric?

It is presented in campaign coverage as a reported result. If you want it stated as verified, you would need a primary measurement source.

What’s the main risk if you copy this pattern?

If the bridge from the small action to the real action is not immediate, the analogy stays clever but does not convert. The donation step must be easy to find and easy to complete.