A few days ago a Toronto-based affiliate marketer, Lorne Fade, has published an ad spending infograph based on Nielsen AdRelevance data. Among other things the infograph reflected the distribution of the top advertisers (by impressions and spend) on Facebook:

A day earlier IKEA published a video on how they are using Facebook by kidnapping the platform’s “most popular function” — that of tagging photos — and getting people to spread the word about IKEA’s products via “via profile pages, the newsfeed, and links”. Why would people tag products, thereby spreading the word? Because whoever tagged a product on a showroom picture first, won it! More about simple, yet ingenious marketing move, in the video itself:

Within just one week, this video has been watched by over 37,000 viewers, while at the time of this post Gordon Gustavsson of IKEA has only 724 friends on Facebook. The friends of friends and other marketers are obviously watching.

Note that you will not find IKEA on the above-quoted list of the top Facebook spenders. Does this mean that their advertising on Facebook is less effective? Of course, not! The above example shows that thinking outside the box can at times be much more effective than pouring millions of dollars into your advertising.

In the past I have heard someone emphasize that to think “outside the box” you gotta first understand what’s in the box. IKEA took an already available idea/tool, and applied a truly outside-the-box thinking to transform it into a tool for viral marketing. Way to go, IKEA!