IKEA.com’s First 5000 Fans Campaign – I Am Not a Fan

I received a notification from a Facebook friend alerting me that IKEA.com had created a fan page and was offering the first 5,000 consumers a free $1,000 gift card for becoming a fan.

Truth be told, I’m already a huge IKEA fan, my whole office is IKEA-fied, so declaring my love on Facebook wasn’t a stretch. I wasn’t alone – by the time I was able to join the effort I missed the opportunity at the golden ticket as they had surpassed 7,000 fans. I was still curious so I followed the steps to start registering, but quit pretty quickly when I was prompted to answer a survey that asked nothing about room décor or color palettes.

I didn’t even need to finish the survey to start receiving texts on my phone that had nothing to do with IKEA. To be fair, in this day and age it begs the obvious that when you start answering personal questions about your lifestyle and are prompted to elect to third party advertisement, you shouldn’t be surprised when sales people come knocking on your virtual door. That said, typically it’s a third party (not the company itself) luring subscribers with gifts. I’ve searched the site hoping this was a crafty effort to appear to be affiliated with the iconic Swedish furniture emporium but no such luck.

A friend and fellow PR practitioner Jennifer Wilbur also did some digging, using a dedicated email address to track the spam. So far she’s received more than 10 spam emails, and has another friend who’s received 5 telemarker calls he attributes to the campaign.

From the social side (or lack thereof), there is no activity from the company on the Facebook page wall, and only a few comments from seemingly thrilled customers who’s profiles I can’t click on.

Update: As I’m writing this post, the entire fan page has just disappeared. In fact, in no longer shows up in the updates of its new fans. In searching, it looks like the company already has a fan page with 60,000 fans and counting and lots of conversation. We’re we all duped? It’s beginning to look that way. Hopefully the brand chimes in on this one.

Photo Credit: Per Ola Wiberg