A printed catalogue staged as a tech reveal
On 3 September 2014, IKEA Singapore and BBH Asia Pacific released Experience the Power of a Bookbook, a two minute and 25 second film announcing the IKEA 2015 catalogue.1 The piece was uploaded to the IKEA Singapore YouTube channel five days before Apple's iPhone 6 reveal on 9 September.1, 2 It was shot against a clean white backdrop, scored with hushed orchestral pads, and presented in the visual grammar of an Apple keynote.1 The catalogue itself rotated in mid-air.1 A presenter introduced its features in the cadence and delivery of Jony Ive.2 The film was watched 19 million times on YouTube within weeks and surfaced on global trade-press lists alongside that month's actual product launches.3
The brief and the agency
BBH Asia Pacific, the Singapore office of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, held the IKEA Singapore creative account at the time.4 The annual IKEA catalogue had become the brand's largest single piece of communication with peak print runs of around 200 million copies in 2016.5, 6 The Singapore brief asked the agency to drive attention for the local 2015 edition without leaning on a sale-led mechanic.3 BBH's response was to position the catalogue as a piece of advanced consumer technology, and to do so during the calendar week that the global tech press dedicated to Apple's autumn product event.3
The film was credited to a Singapore creative team that included executive creative director Scott McClelland, with creative directors Tinus Strydom and Maurice Wee.7 Jörgen Eghammer, IKEA's "chief design guru", played the presenter.1 He spoke in the soft, measured tone that audiences had come to recognise from a decade of Apple product films.2 The script was straight pastiche, but the content was accurate to the catalogue's actual properties.
The script as a strategic device
Eghammer introduced the catalogue as the "bookbook", a 328 page printed object with "no cables, not even a power cable".1, 8 He described "eternal battery life" and "tactile touch technology that you can actually feel".1, 8 He declared the device pre-loaded with 328 pages of "inspiring home furnishing ideas".1, 8 A stylised demonstration of bookmark function followed, then a beat on a bookmark that can be found again "even if you close the application" and on the absence of lag, glitches, scrolling and crashes.8 The script reframed every limitation of print as a feature, and every feature of an Apple product as the absence of a print quality.
The strategic device was deliberate. The film did not argue against digital technology. It argued that the printed catalogue was a coherent piece of communication design with its own affordances. By using Apple's visual grammar to make that argument, BBH borrowed credibility from the keynote category and deflected attention from the price and product detail of the catalogue itself.9 The brand voice stayed warm. The category was reframed.
The release and the reception
The film was uploaded on 3 September 2014.1 Coverage in Dezeen, Hypebeast, Mashable, Tech Times and the Christian Science Monitor began the following day.1, 2 The Mashable Ad Awards September 2014 ranking placed Bookbook above Apple's and Samsung's product films of the same week.3 In September 2014 it was the most-watched video in Singapore and the third most-watched in Malaysia.3, 7 More than 6,000 people uploaded organic Instagram pictures of themselves with their own bookbook in the months that followed.3 By the end of October the film had cleared 13 million views on YouTube, climbing to over 19 million on the IKEA Singapore channel and several million more on re-uploads.3, 7
The trade press treated the work as a model for category-jamming brand communication. Campaign and The Drum placed Bookbook on year-end retrospective lists. The film was used in agency new-business presentations across the BBH network and was nominated in advertising awards into 2015.7 The piece did not collect a Cannes Grand Prix, but it became one of the most cited catalogue films of the decade and a textbook example of an owned creative platform outperforming an event-driven media budget.
What the film did for IKEA's catalogue
Bookbook arrived at a moment when the printed IKEA catalogue still ran at near-peak distribution. The brand printed 217 million copies of the 2014 edition in 32 languages across 50-plus markets, and the printed object remained close to 70 percent of IKEA's annual marketing spend.6 Bookbook protected the relevance of that asset. By framing the catalogue as a product worth a launch keynote, BBH Asia Pacific moved attention away from the price comparison frame and back toward the catalogue's own design discipline.
Six years later, in December 2020, IKEA announced that the 2021 edition would be the brand's last printed and digital catalogue, ending a 70 year tradition that began in 1951.5, 6 Read against that ending, Bookbook now sits in the brand archive as the moment when the catalogue's editorial confidence peaked. The film is still cited in trade-press retrospectives of the catalogue era, and it remains the most viewed IKEA catalogue advertisement on the brand's YouTube footprint. BBH Asia Pacific subsequently extended the platform with further annual catalogue films in the same comic register, including a 2015 short for the 2016 edition that pastiched virtual reality.
Source: IKEA Singapore
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. Dezeen, Amy Frearson, "IKEA spoofs Apple with launch of "Bookbook" - its new print catalogue", 4 September 2014, for the film as a spoof by the agency BBH that presents the 2015 IKEA catalogue as if it were the latest Apple product, posted on IKEA Singapore's YouTube page the day before the article, which dates the upload to 3 September 2014, and described there as a two-minute video (no source confirms the running time of two minutes and 25 seconds given in the body), for the clean white background emulating the way Apple presents its products and the catalogue turning slowly in mid-air, for Jorgen Eghammer as the film's "chief design guru", for the "bookbook" as a 328-page catalogue with "eternal battery life" and "tactile touch technology" whose content "comes pre-installed via 328 high-definition pages", and for the article itself as part of the coverage of 4 September 2014. The source does not describe the score. https://www.dezeen.com/2014/09/04/ikea-spoofs-apple-with-launch-of-bookbook-its-new-printed-catalogue/
2. Launch-week coverage, September 2014. Hypebeast, "IKEA Pokes Fun at Apple with "Experience the Power of a bookbook"", 4 September 2014, for the parody of Apple's product launch style premiering on IKEA's YouTube channel and for the lines "the battery life is eternal", "tactile touch technology", "328 high-definition pages" and "no lag". https://hypebeast.com/2014/9/ikea-pokes-fun-at-apple-with-experience-the-power-of-a-bookbook Tech Times, Laura Rosenfeld, "IKEA parodies Apple in new 'Bookbook' catalog commercial", 4 September 2014, for the spot featuring "Chief Design Guru" Jorgen Eghammer and for its timing near Apple's then rumoured iPhone 6 announcement on 9 September. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/14883/20140904/ikea-apple-parody-commercial.htm The Christian Science Monitor, Benjamin Glaser, "'Bookbook' ad from Ikea mocks Apple in a brilliant way", 5 September 2014, for the film as a parody of Apple's advertising voiced by "Chief Design Güru Jörgen Eghammer" and for the catalogue being free. With Dezeen, these reports date the first coverage to 4 and 5 September 2014; no Mashable article from that week was checked. https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/0905/Bookbook-ad-from-Ikea-mocks-Apple-in-a-brilliant-way NBC News, "IKEA Skewers Apple's High-Minded Marketing in Hilarious Viral Sketch", no byline or date shown on the page, off whitelist and added during the retrofit, for Eghammer describing the catalogue "in reverent tones evoking Apple's lead designer Jony Ive" and "speaking with a dreamy quietude in front of a stark-white background". https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna55995575
3. Print Power, "How IKEA unleashed the power of the 'Bookbook'", 29 August 2017, for IKEA needing "a way to get its audience's attention in order to have a wider impact at the launch of its new catalogue", for the brief to compare the print catalogue to technology by parodying Apple, for the video having been "initially launched for the Singapore and Malaysia markets" before its popularity spread worldwide, for "Over 19 million views on YouTube alone" (the source gives no timeframe for that figure), for the video having outranked "both Apple's and Samsung's new product videos on Mashable's list in September 2014" (the source does not name a Mashable Ad Awards ranking), for its being the "#1 most watch video in Singapore and #3 in Malaysia in September 2014", with "433k views from Singapore and 440k from Malaysia within the first few weeks of launch", and for "Over 6,000 people" who "organically uploaded photos of themselves on Instagram alone interacting with their own 'BookBook'". The source says nothing about a sale-led mechanic or about re-uploads. https://www.printpower.eu/case-studies/ikea-bookbook/
4. Wikipedia, "Bartle Bogle Hegarty", retrieved 26 September 2026, for BBH as a British global advertising agency founded in London in 1982, part of the Publicis group, with Singapore among its offices. The source does not mention IKEA; the agency's work for IKEA in Singapore rests on footnotes 1 and 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Bogle_Hegarty
5. IKEA Museum, "IKEA and advertising" (served under the browser title "IKEA advertising through the ages"), undated, retrieved 26 September 2026, for the catalogue as "by far the most important tool for positioning IKEA as a brand", for its peak circulation, given without a year as "at most" 220 million copies in 69 versions, 32 languages and more than 50 markets, and for the 2021 catalogue, published in autumn 2020, having been the final printed one. https://ikeamuseum.com/en/explore/the-story-of-ikea/ikea-and-advertising/
6. Catalogue scale and history. Wikipedia, "IKEA Catalogue", retrieved 26 September 2026, for the catalogue having been first published in Swedish in 1951, for approximately 208 million copies printed in fiscal year 2013 and 200 million distributed at the 2016 peak, in 69 versions and 32 languages to more than 50 countries, for its having consumed 70 percent of IKEA's annual marketing budget as of 2004, and for IKEA's announcement in December 2020 that it would end publication after a 70-year run with the 2021 edition as the final one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_Catalogue Wikipedia, "IKEA", retrieved 26 September 2026, for the catalogue as the company's main marketing tool, consuming 70 percent of its annual marketing budget, for the 2016 peak of 200 million copies in 32 languages to more than 50 markets, and for the December 2020 decision to end both the print and the digital catalogue with the 2021 edition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA Asendia, "IKEA and the power of print", 6 May 2015, off whitelist and added during the retrofit, for 217 million copies of the catalogue having been printed in 32 languages in 2014. https://www.asendia.co.uk/asendia-insights/ikea-and-power-print/
7. Agency credits and awards. BBH, case page "IKEA Bookbook", listed in the verse's sources for the agency-side credits; the address served only the agency's site title and no case content, page not reachable on 26 September 2026. https://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/ikea-bookbook Marketing-Interactive, Staff Writer, "LOOK Here's who won the Grand Prix award at SPH iink Awards 2015", 3 August 2015, off whitelist and added during the retrofit as the replacement for the credits, for IKEA BookBook having won the Grand Prix at the SPH iink Awards 2015, with BBH named iink Creative Agency of the Year, and for the credits: executive creative director Scott McClelland, creative directors Tinus Strydom and Maurice Wee, art directors Germaine Chen and Maurice Wee, copywriters Tinus Strydom and Angie Featherstone. https://www.marketing-interactive.com/look-won-grand-prix-award-sph-iink-awards-2015 LBB Online, "BBH Asia's IKEA Bookbook Wins at Singapore Hall of Fame", 17 November 2014, off whitelist and added during the retrofit, for the film having passed 13 million YouTube views by mid November 2014 (no source confirms the body's end of October), for its being the No. 1 most watched YouTube video in Singapore, and for Gold as Campaign of the Year in both the single medium and the integrated category. No source mentions the film's use in new-business presentations. https://lbbonline.com/news/bbh-asias-ikea-bookbook-wins-at-singapore-hall-of-fame
8. LYBIO.NET, "IKEA - Experience The Power Of A Bookbook", 15 September 2014, off whitelist and added during the retrofit, a full transcript of the film used to verify the quoted script lines: "no cables, not even a power cable", "the battery life is eternal", "The navigation is based on tactile touch technology that you can actually feel", "Content comes pre-installed via 328 high definition pages of inspiring home furnishing ideas", "no lag", and the bookmark that "even if you close the application, you could easily find the bookmark again". The transcript has no line on glitches or crashes, and its words "no matter how fast you scroll" treat scrolling as part of browsing rather than as something absent. https://lybio.net/ikea-experience-the-power-of-a-bookbook/howto-style/
9. Social Media Club, Audrey Rochas, "Why IKEA's BookBook Made The Buzz", 1 January 2015, for its reading of the parody as borrowing Apple's codes without naming the brand while insisting that "IKEA is low-cost, IKEA is not hype, IKEA is not expensive", and for its ten reasons the film "made the buzz (and generates more than the iPhone6)", beginning with "The BookBook is available for nothing". https://socialmediaclub.org/blog/2015/01/01/why-ikeas-bookbook-made-the-buzz/
