The collaboration between IKEA Switzerland and ftc communication began in the fall of 2017. Our agency actively supported IKEA in its relations with the media in French-speaking Switzerland for the official reopening of its main store in the region (in Aubonne, near Lausanne), celebrated on Wednesday, September 13, 2017 after three and a half years of work and more than 70 million francs (CHF) invested. We also supervised journalists who attended the event. It has been a magnificent success, with a remarkable media coverage.
Drawing on this experience, our agency has since continued to provide constant support to IKEA in its media relations in Western Switzerland. To ensure the coherence of actions at the national level, IKEA and ftc work in close collaboration with Bühler & Bühler, a partner agency in Zurich which is dedicated to the Swiss-German part of the country.
The main tasks performed by ftc communication as part of this media relations mandate include:
One of the main objectives of this process is to make known new collections of particular interest to journalists and the general public. This involves, for example, unveiling the fruit of an exceptional collaboration with internationally recognized brands, such as Sonos for the Symfonisk collection of aesthetic speakers, released in summer 2019.
Beyond purely product-oriented communication, some collections also help to highlight important institutional values dear to IKEA, such as community involvement (partnerships with non-profit organisations and charitable foundations) and environmental commitment (use of renewable materials, reduction of the carbon footprint).
Corporate communication consulting is also another prerogative of our agency. We carefully advise and support IKEA in the media presentation of the main axes of its strategic vision on the Swiss market, its financial results, as well as regular institutional reviews. This was reflected for instance by the organisation of exclusive interviews with the CEO of IKEA Switzerland, widely reported by the media.
For a media relations mandate like this one, performance indicators are mainly quantity and, above all, quality of the media coverage generated by our communication. This is what allows our client to make their voice heard more widely in the public space. In order to measure the success of our activities, a daily media watch has been implemented nationwide with Argus Data Insights, Switzerland’s leader in media intelligence solutions. It allows us to follow all mentions of IKEA in French-speaking media and to adapt our communication accordingly.