Lamp (advertisement)
Encyclopedia
Lamp is a television and cinema advertisement released in September 2002 to promote the IKEA
chain of furniture stores in the United States. The 60-second commercial was the first part of the "Unböring" campaign conceived by advertising agency
Crispin Porter + Bogusky
, and follows a lamp abandoned by its owner. It was produced by the production company
Morton/Jankel/Zander
, and was directed by Spike Jonze
. Post-production and editing was handled by Spot Welders and sound design by the California-based MIT Out Sound. The commercial aired concurrently with another IKEA piece in the same vein, titled Moo Cow. Lamp, and its associated campaign, was a popular, critical, and financial success. Sales of IKEA furniture increased by eight percent during the period in which the commercial ran, and Lamp received a number of awards, including a Grand Clio
and the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
, considered the most prestigious accolade granted by the advertising community.
by a sofa. A woman unplugs it and carries it outside over her shoulder, the camera angle receding from the lamp's former home. A sombre, minimalist piano piece plays in the background as the lamp is left by the side of the road on a dismal, windy day. Hours pass, and shots of the lamp sitting alone in the pouring rain are intercut with others taken from the lamp's perspective, showing through a window a view of its former owner on her sofa beside a new IKEA anglepoise lamp
. As the camera pulls away from the abandoned lamp, a Swedish man (Jonas Forlander) walks into view and turns to the camera, stating: "Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you crazy (sic
). It has no feelings, and the new one is much better." The piece ends with the IKEA logo above the campaign's tagline ("Unböring"), and a link to its website, Unböring.com.
. According to CP+B partner
Alex Bogusky, the idea behind Lamp, and the "Unböring" campaign of which it was a part, was to reposition furniture as a fashion item, and marketing efforts were aimed at Americans who "overspend on fashion purchases such as clothes and shoes, [but] still cling to a 'til death do us part' attitude with their furniture."
After gaining approval for the project, CP+B hired production company
Morton/Jankel/Zander
(MJZ) to handle production of Lamp and its sister piece Moo Cow, which would air concurrently. MJZ assigned different directors to handle each of the television and cinema commercials and, after a brief selection process, chose Spike Jonze
, to oversee production of Lamp. In addition to his work on the feature films Being John Malkovich
and Adaptation, Jonze's previous body of work included television advertisements such as The Morning After for Nike, Inc.
in 2000, and Crazy Legs for Levi's
in 2001. CP+B senior producer Rupert Samuel said of Jonze: "As an agency we had always wanted to work with him, and he really brought [Lamp] to life. He turned it into more than what it was on paper."
Shooting Lamp proved relatively straightforward. The majority of the script was dedicated to creating the appropriate mood for the piece through camera angles and lighting. While the "punchline" of the ad was rewritten several times, there was little need for improvisation on set. Casting decisions were made by Jonze himself, who said of the choice for the Swedish man: "I really wanted a non-actor for the Ikea guy. I wanted it to feel like he was just a worker at Ikea who'd walked out of the store and on to the street. The guy we cast (Jonas Forlander) had never acted before. A variety of lamps were considered as potential "protagonists" for Lamp, and according to Jonze, the red tabletop lamp in the final piece was settled upon because it "stood out as the most pathetic of the bunch." At the end of the shoot, one of the crew took the prop home. When Crispin Porter and Bogusky asked for it back, they received a note mimicking the commercial, which read: "See? you've fallen for it. You've grown attached to the lamp, and you are crazy."
and Friends, and sports events with wide appeal, such as the 2002 World Series
. The two television and cinema pieces were complemented by internet, print, and billboard
advertisements pushing the "Unböring" concept. In all, IKEA's advertising spend for 2003 amounted to an estimated $US
45,000,000.
The campaign proved a huge popular, critical, and financial success. Sales of IKEA products within the United States increased by eight percent during the period in which Lamp was broadcast. It was analysed extensively by the media, with commentaries appearing in publications such as The New York Times
, The Washington Post
, and the Chicago Sun-Times
. It proved no less popular within the advertising community, with particular praise given for the execution of Lamp. Dan Wieden
, co-founder of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy
, said of the piece: "Lamp hits audiences like a bullet between the eyes." Chairman of DDB Worldwide
Bob Scarpelli commented that Lamp was "one of those ideas that changes the whole landscape".
Not all reviewers were as taken with the piece, however, and similarities between aspects of Lamp and advertisements for The Carphone Warehouse
running contemporaneously in the United Kingdom were noted.Criticism was also levelled at the message behind the campaign; Rob Walker of Slate magazine
commented: "You could argue that IKEA thus associates itself not just with the useless cluttering of landfill, but with a certain slavery to trend-following." Despite this, Lamp was the eighth-most-awarded advertising campaign of 2003, garnering a significant number of awards from the advertising and television communities, including Golds at the London International Awards, the ANDY Awards, the Association of Intedependent Commercial Producers Awards, and the prestigious Grand CLIO Award for Television and Cinema
.
In a move which caused a considerable upset, Lamp was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
, considered the most prestigious award in the advertising community, in place of the favourite for the prize—Cog, a British advertisement for the Honda Accord
. Before the jury made their decision, which took longer than any judging session in the history of the festival, Lamp was seen as a long-shot for the award at best. Many speculated that the surprise result was due to accusations of plagiarism
levelled at the makers of Cog by producers of the Swiss film The Way Things Go
. Ben Walker, the copywriter
behind Cog reported in the trade publication
Adweek
that "A couple of people on the jury told me the reason it didn't win is 'cause they didn't want to be seen to be awarding something which people in some corners had said we copied."
), in favour of promoting the design virtues of the brand. Lamp continues to be highly thought of within the advertising community, and in 2009 was voted one of the "Top Ten Television Advertisements of the Decade" by Boards magazine
.
IKEA
IKEA is a privately held, international home products company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture such as beds and desks, appliances and home accessories. The company is the world's largest furniture retailer...
chain of furniture stores in the United States. The 60-second commercial was the first part of the "Unböring" campaign conceived by advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...
Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Crispin Porter + Bogusky , a member of publicly-traded MDC Partners, is an advertising agency that currently employs around 1,000 people. It was founded in 1965 by Sam Crispin.. Crispin then became partners with Chuck Porter and Alex Bogusky...
, and follows a lamp abandoned by its owner. It was produced by the production company
Production company
A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...
Morton/Jankel/Zander
Annabel Jankel
Annabel Jankel is an award-winning British film and TV director who first came to prominence as a music video director and the co-creator and director of the pioneering cyber-character Max Headroom...
, and was directed by Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...
. Post-production and editing was handled by Spot Welders and sound design by the California-based MIT Out Sound. The commercial aired concurrently with another IKEA piece in the same vein, titled Moo Cow. Lamp, and its associated campaign, was a popular, critical, and financial success. Sales of IKEA furniture increased by eight percent during the period in which the commercial ran, and Lamp received a number of awards, including a Grand Clio
Clio Awards
The Clio Awards are annual awards bestowed to reward innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication. The categories include work in nearly all types of media, and the judges are advertising professionals from around the world....
and the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in advertising and related fields. The seven-day festival, incorporating the awarding of the Lions awards, is held yearly at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France...
, considered the most prestigious accolade granted by the advertising community.
Synopsis
Lamp opens with a shot of a red tabletop lampLight fixture
A light fixture, light fitting, or luminaire is an electrical device used to create artificial light and/or illumination, by use of an electric lamp...
by a sofa. A woman unplugs it and carries it outside over her shoulder, the camera angle receding from the lamp's former home. A sombre, minimalist piano piece plays in the background as the lamp is left by the side of the road on a dismal, windy day. Hours pass, and shots of the lamp sitting alone in the pouring rain are intercut with others taken from the lamp's perspective, showing through a window a view of its former owner on her sofa beside a new IKEA anglepoise lamp
Anglepoise lamp
The Anglepoise lamp is a balanced-arm lamp designed in 1932 by British designer George Carwardine.-History and development:Carwardine was a car designer and was, at the time he invented the Anglepoise lamp, a freelance design consultant specialising in vehicle suspension systems...
. As the camera pulls away from the abandoned lamp, a Swedish man (Jonas Forlander) walks into view and turns to the camera, stating: "Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you crazy (sic
Sic
Sic—generally inside square brackets, [sic], and occasionally parentheses, —when added just after a quote or reprinted text, indicates the passage appears exactly as in the original source...
). It has no feelings, and the new one is much better." The piece ends with the IKEA logo above the campaign's tagline ("Unböring"), and a link to its website, Unböring.com.
Production
Lamp was the first televised commercial produced by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) for IKEA. The agency received the contract in early 2002, taking over from the Minneapolis-based advertising agency Carmichael Lynch, who had held the IKEA account since 2000, when the furniture chain ended its 11-year partnership with Deutsch Inc.Deutsch Inc.
Deutsch Inc. is a notable American advertising agency.Founded in 1969 as David Deutsch Associates, Inc., in 1989 the founder's son Donny Deutsch took over the agency and led it through a period of growth and creative accolades, including:...
. According to CP+B partner
Partnership
A partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.Since humans are social beings, partnerships between individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments, and varied combinations thereof, have always been and remain commonplace...
Alex Bogusky, the idea behind Lamp, and the "Unböring" campaign of which it was a part, was to reposition furniture as a fashion item, and marketing efforts were aimed at Americans who "overspend on fashion purchases such as clothes and shoes, [but] still cling to a 'til death do us part' attitude with their furniture."
After gaining approval for the project, CP+B hired production company
Production company
A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...
Morton/Jankel/Zander
Annabel Jankel
Annabel Jankel is an award-winning British film and TV director who first came to prominence as a music video director and the co-creator and director of the pioneering cyber-character Max Headroom...
(MJZ) to handle production of Lamp and its sister piece Moo Cow, which would air concurrently. MJZ assigned different directors to handle each of the television and cinema commercials and, after a brief selection process, chose Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...
, to oversee production of Lamp. In addition to his work on the feature films Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich is a 1999 American black comedy-fantasy film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich, who plays a fictional version of himself...
and Adaptation, Jonze's previous body of work included television advertisements such as The Morning After for Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
in 2000, and Crazy Legs for Levi's
Levi Strauss & Co.
Levi Strauss & Co. is a privately held American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came from Buttenheim, Franconia, to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business...
in 2001. CP+B senior producer Rupert Samuel said of Jonze: "As an agency we had always wanted to work with him, and he really brought [Lamp] to life. He turned it into more than what it was on paper."
Shooting Lamp proved relatively straightforward. The majority of the script was dedicated to creating the appropriate mood for the piece through camera angles and lighting. While the "punchline" of the ad was rewritten several times, there was little need for improvisation on set. Casting decisions were made by Jonze himself, who said of the choice for the Swedish man: "I really wanted a non-actor for the Ikea guy. I wanted it to feel like he was just a worker at Ikea who'd walked out of the store and on to the street. The guy we cast (Jonas Forlander) had never acted before. A variety of lamps were considered as potential "protagonists" for Lamp, and according to Jonze, the red tabletop lamp in the final piece was settled upon because it "stood out as the most pathetic of the bunch." At the end of the shoot, one of the crew took the prop home. When Crispin Porter and Bogusky asked for it back, they received a note mimicking the commercial, which read: "See? you've fallen for it. You've grown attached to the lamp, and you are crazy."
Release and reception
Lamp premiered in September 2002, to coincide with the opening of sixty new IKEA stores across the United States. It aired, along with Moo Cow, during commercial breaks in popular network television shows such as FrasierFrasier
Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...
and Friends, and sports events with wide appeal, such as the 2002 World Series
2002 World Series
The 2002 World Series was a best-of-seven playoff series to determine the champion of Major League Baseball for the 2002 season. It was the 98th such contest between the champions of the American League and National League , and featured the AL champion Anaheim Angels against the NL champion San...
. The two television and cinema pieces were complemented by internet, print, and billboard
Billboard
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
advertisements pushing the "Unböring" concept. In all, IKEA's advertising spend for 2003 amounted to an estimated $US
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
45,000,000.
The campaign proved a huge popular, critical, and financial success. Sales of IKEA products within the United States increased by eight percent during the period in which Lamp was broadcast. It was analysed extensively by the media, with commentaries appearing in publications such as The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, and the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
. It proved no less popular within the advertising community, with particular praise given for the execution of Lamp. Dan Wieden
Dan Wieden
Dan Wieden is an American advertising executive who co-founded Wieden+Kennedy, and who coined the Nike tagline "Just Do It".He and David Kennedy were listed as number 22 on the Advertising Age 100 ad people of the 20th century...
, co-founder of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy
Wieden+Kennedy
Wieden+Kennedy is an independently owned American advertising agency best known for its work for Nike...
, said of the piece: "Lamp hits audiences like a bullet between the eyes." Chairman of DDB Worldwide
DDB Worldwide
DDB Worldwide Communications Group Inc., known internationally as DDB, is a worldwide marketing communications network. It is owned by Omnicom Group Inc, one of the world's largest advertising holding companies...
Bob Scarpelli commented that Lamp was "one of those ideas that changes the whole landscape".
Not all reviewers were as taken with the piece, however, and similarities between aspects of Lamp and advertisements for The Carphone Warehouse
The Carphone Warehouse
Carphone Warehouse Group PLC , known as The Carphone Warehouse, is Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer, with over 1,700 stores across Europe. It is based in the United Kingdom and is a 50% subsidiary of Best Buy...
running contemporaneously in the United Kingdom were noted.Criticism was also levelled at the message behind the campaign; Rob Walker of Slate magazine
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
commented: "You could argue that IKEA thus associates itself not just with the useless cluttering of landfill, but with a certain slavery to trend-following." Despite this, Lamp was the eighth-most-awarded advertising campaign of 2003, garnering a significant number of awards from the advertising and television communities, including Golds at the London International Awards, the ANDY Awards, the Association of Intedependent Commercial Producers Awards, and the prestigious Grand CLIO Award for Television and Cinema
Clio Awards
The Clio Awards are annual awards bestowed to reward innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication. The categories include work in nearly all types of media, and the judges are advertising professionals from around the world....
.
In a move which caused a considerable upset, Lamp was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in advertising and related fields. The seven-day festival, incorporating the awarding of the Lions awards, is held yearly at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France...
, considered the most prestigious award in the advertising community, in place of the favourite for the prize—Cog, a British advertisement for the Honda Accord
Honda Accord
The Honda Accord is a series of compact, mid-size and full-size automobiles manufactured by Honda since 1976, and sold in a majority of automotive markets throughout the world....
. Before the jury made their decision, which took longer than any judging session in the history of the festival, Lamp was seen as a long-shot for the award at best. Many speculated that the surprise result was due to accusations of plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
levelled at the makers of Cog by producers of the Swiss film The Way Things Go
The Way Things Go
The Way Things Go is a 1987 art film by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. It documents a long causal chain assembled of everyday objects, resembling a Rube Goldberg machine....
. Ben Walker, the copywriter
Copywriting
Copywriting is the use of words and ideas to promote a person, business, opinion or idea. Although the word copy may be applied to any content intended for printing , the term copywriter is generally limited to promotional situations, regardless of the medium...
behind Cog reported in the trade publication
Trade journal
A trade magazine, also called a professional magazine, is a magazine published with the intention of target marketing to a specific industry or type of trade. The collective term for this area of publishing is the trade press....
Adweek
Adweek
Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
that "A couple of people on the jury told me the reason it didn't win is 'cause they didn't want to be seen to be awarding something which people in some corners had said we copied."
Legacy
Crispin Porter + Bogusky continued to produce material for the "Unböring" campaign until 2005. However, after Lamp and Moo Cow, the focus of the campaign shifted. The "furniture guilt" concept was abandoned in the follow-up television advertisements, Kitchen and Living Room (both directed by Wes AndersonWes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials....
), in favour of promoting the design virtues of the brand. Lamp continues to be highly thought of within the advertising community, and in 2009 was voted one of the "Top Ten Television Advertisements of the Decade" by Boards magazine
Boards (magazine)
Boards is a former international trade publication catering to the advertising community. Launched in August 1999, the magazine was published monthly until May 2010, when a corporate restructuring of its Canadian publisher, Brunico Communications Ltd., led to the brand's shelving...
.
External links
- Lamp, at the Morton/Jankel/Zander website.