An everyday wonder became the brand's master platform
In February 2014, IKEA UK and Ireland and Mother London introduced The Wonderful Everyday, a master brand platform built around the proposition that real life happens in small domestic moments rather than in big set-piece occasions.1 The platform replaced a tactical, price-led communications model with an emotional editorial frame, and it did so by reframing the home as a stage for daily wonder.2 The opening film showed a darkened forest lit up by IKEA lamps, announcing the retailer's commitment to sell only energy-efficient LED bulbs by 2016.1 The line The wonderful everyday closed the film and became the platform endline. Within three years the platform had collected two Gold trophies at the 2017 Effie Awards UK gala, where IKEA UK was named Brand of the Year.3
The strategic problem
IKEA UK approached the 2013 to 2014 communications planning cycle with three issues on the brief. Sales growth had slowed against the 2009 to 2012 baseline.3 Trade-press perception of the brand's UK voice had become heavily tactical, dominated by price-points and seasonal sales.2 Competitors at every price tier, from Argos to John Lewis, were investing in master brand emotion.4 Mother London, which had won the IKEA UK creative account in 2010 from BMB, was asked to develop a long-running editorial idea capable of carrying the brand for several years rather than a single annual peak campaign.2, 5
The agency's strategic answer was to anchor IKEA's UK voice in the daily domestic experience that already existed in customers' homes. The team argued that IKEA's products mattered most in micro-moments, the breakfast that worked, the bedroom that calmed a child to sleep, the table that fitted the family, and that the brand's communication should be built around those moments rather than around the price of a single line.3 The proposition was tested through extended ethnographic interviews with UK households across income brackets and translated into the proposition that became The wonderful everyday.
The opening films
The platform's bedroom film was Beds, directed for Mother London by Juan Cabral through MJZ.6 The film ran in the UK from July 2014 with cinema and broadcast spots in 60 second and 30 second cuts and a long-form online version.6 A series of follow-on chapters extended the platform across the rest of 2014 and into 2015. Wonderful Everyday: Bedroom was joined by Wonderful Everyday: Bathroom, a slow-motion morning routine, and Wonderful Everyday: Kitchen, a family meal staged as a small daily ritual. Each chapter retained the calm pacing, the considered art direction, and the feeling that the camera had been invited into a household rather than dropped into a set.
In April 2016 Mother London extended the platform with Wonderful Life, a film that recast a couple's everyday moments as grand exploits, and in October 2017 with a Fantasia-style film in which a family celebrates small domestic achievements to a track by Jack White.7 The chapter shifted register from quiet to playful while keeping the platform's editorial frame intact. Subsequent UK campaigns under the Wonderful Everyday umbrella covered children's sleep, music in the home, and the rituals of cooking, all written from inside the household rather than around it.2, 7
Source: Commercial Archive Youtube
The platform as strategy
Mother London's planning team treated The Wonderful Everyday as a master frame rather than as a campaign tagline. Inside that frame, sustainability, accessibility, kitchens, beds, lighting and cooking became chapters in a single brand argument. The 2017 Effie case study made the point explicit: the platform protected IKEA's UK communications from the pressure to fragment into channel-specific tactical work.3 Each annual chapter could move forwards within the same emotional register, and each new product launch could enter the platform without rewriting the brand's voice.
The work also gave IKEA UK an editorial position on sustainability in 2014, well before the wider retail category had moved into the territory.1 The Wonderful Everyday framed the home as the place where small daily decisions about energy, food, sleep and belongings accumulated into life. That frame allowed the brand to talk about insulation, water saving, LED lighting and reuse without resorting to category jargon.1
Effectiveness and award recognition
The IPA Effectiveness Awards database registered The Wonderful Everyday as one of the most measured master brand campaigns of the decade.4 Mother London and IKEA UK reported sales growth, brand-equity uplift, and an extended share-of-voice advantage against the household furnishings category through 2014 and 2015.3, 4 The platform took two Gold Effies at the 2017 UK gala, with IKEA UK collecting the Brand of the Year title at the same event.3 Campaign named IKEA's The Wonderful Everyday its Campaign of the Year for 2014.8 The work was repeatedly cited in trade-press long-reads as a benchmark for how a national platform could pay back over a multi-year horizon.8
The line travelled
The platform was developed for the UK and Ireland market. In the years that followed, IKEA's wider international communications adopted the same editorial register and, in many markets, the same line. Endlines such as Where life happens in Sweden (Åkestam Holst, 2016) and Life is more wonderful with someone to share it with in international territories sat inside the same broader frame.9 By the late 2010s the proposition had become IKEA's de facto global platform, even where the literal copy varied. The Mother London work remains the editorial origin of the master brand idea that defined the brand's voice across the second half of the 2010s.
Source: IKEA UK Youtube
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. Launch reporting, February 2014. Campaign, "Ikea 'the wonderful everyday' by Mother", 11 February 2014, added during the retrofit, for the Mother spot released under the line the wonderful everyday in which a forest is illuminated by IKEA lamps while the voiceover explains IKEA's commitment to sell only energy-efficient LED bulbs by 2016 ("Sometimes small things can make a big difference"), directed by Martin Krejci at Stink, and for the campaign celebrating everyday household moments. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ikea-the-wonderful-everyday-mother/1230636 Marketing Week, Sarah Vizard, "Ikea readies first sustainability campaign in marketing switch", 3 February 2014, off whitelist and added during the retrofit, for The Wonderful Everyday launching on Saturday 8 February 2014 with spots by Mother in which a forest in darkness lights up tree by tree to promote the switch to LED bulbs, for this being the first time IKEA highlighted sustainability in its UK advertising, for kitchen range ads following from 11 February, and for Peter Wright as IKEA's UK and Ireland marketing manager, which places the launch with IKEA UK and Ireland. https://www.marketingweek.com/ikea-readies-first-sustainability-campaign-in-marketing-switch/ Wikipedia, "IKEA", retrieved 26 September 2026, listed in the verse's sources, for IKEA having sold only energy-efficient LED lightbulbs, lamps and light fixtures from 2016. Of the four themes the body names (insulation, water saving, LED lighting, reuse) these sources document LED lighting only, and none of them compares IKEA's timing with the wider retail category. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA
2. Creativebrief, "IKEA 'The Wonderful Everyday' by Mother London" (page heading "The Story of The Wonderful Everyday"), undated, retrieved 26 September 2026, for IKEA facing tough challenges in 2013 after 25 years of almost continuous growth, with its rate of growth starting to decline and rivals chasing its market leadership, for Mother having "rejected seasonal and event-driven marketing in favour of a more continuous, always-on approach", for the platform going back to IKEA's founding purpose "To better the lives of the many people", and for the later sleep campaign launched with a TV prequel to Aesop's fable of the Hare and the Tortoise. The page says nothing about price-led communications or trade-press perception, and of the later subjects the body names it documents sleep only, not music in the home or cooking. https://www.creativebrief.com/agency/mother-london/case-studies/ikea-the-wonderful-everyday
3. Effie Worldwide, Effie Insights, "IKEA & Mother London, 'The Wonderful Everyday'", undated, retrieved 26 September 2026, for sales growth and penetration having declined in 2013, for IKEA's global vision "to create a better everyday life for the many people" and the platform's premise that "it's the little, everyday things" that make life what it is, for Mother's "model of communicating a product category, but through the lens of the brand", which delivered a return in each highlighted category and "a halo across the whole business", for the campaign having "ultimately exceeded sales objectives", and for the two Gold trophies at the 2017 Effie Awards UK Gala, where IKEA was also named Brand of the Year. The page gives no 2009 to 2012 baseline, no brand-equity or share-of-voice figures, and does not use the words fragmentation or tactical: the body's sentence on fragmentation is a paraphrase of the category-through-brand model, not the case study's own point. https://effie.org/insights/ikea-mother-london-the-wonderful-everyday/
4. WARC, Kieran Bradshaw, "IKEA: The Wonderful Everyday", IPA Effectiveness Awards 2018, Silver, 8 October 2018, off whitelist and added during the retrofit, for the IPA effectiveness paper on the platform, for IKEA's top-of-mind awareness slipping against John Lewis before the campaign, and for the four-year campaign having exceeded revenue targets, reversed seven years of penetration decline and broadened sales across the range. Only the abstract is outside the paywall; it names no other competitor, gives no share-of-voice figure and does not rank the campaign among the most measured of the decade. https://www.warc.com/content/paywall/article/ipa/ikea-the-wonderful-everyday/en-gb/122386
5. Campaign, Will Green, "Ikea and Mother part ways after 16 years", 19 November 2025, added during the retrofit, for Mother having won the IKEA account in 2010 ("The independent shop took over from BMB in 2010 following a review"). https://www.campaignlive.com/article/ikea-mother-part-ways-16-years/1940321 Wikipedia, "Mother (advertising agency)", retrieved 26 September 2026, listed in the verse's sources, for IKEA's "The Wonderful Everyday" among the agency's campaigns. Neither source describes the brief Mother was given. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_(advertising_agency)
6. Campaign, "Ikea 'beds' by Mother", 10 July 2014, added during the retrofit, for Beds as a Mother film directed by Juan Cabral through MJZ, in which a woman descends from the sky cushioned by suspended IKEA beds before landing in her own bedroom, with Prunella Scales reading from Shakespeare's The Tempest, supported by social, experiential and PR activity. https://www.campaignlive.com/article/ikea-beds-mother/1303101 Ads of the World, "IKEA: Beds", July 2014, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the film's publication in the United Kingdom in July 2014, the agency Mother, London, the production company MJZ, the director Juan Cabral and the director of photography Eric Gautier. Neither source gives the 60 and 30 second cuts or a long-form online version. https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/beds
7. The 2016 and 2017 chapters. Adweek (AgencySpy), Erik Oster, "Mother London Gets Sentimental About Its 'Wonderful Life' for IKEA", 21 April 2016, off whitelist and listed in the verse's sources, for Wonderful Life as a Mother London film within the ongoing Wonderful Everyday campaign, directed by Gary Freedman of Independent, which shows a couple's life events in exaggerated form before revealing them as glamorised versions of everyday moments, and for its debut in the UK and Ireland. https://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/mother-london-gets-sentimental-about-its-wonderful-life-for-ikea/ The Drum, "Ad of the Day: Ikea's 'Wonderful Everyday' returns in colourful Fantasia-style spot", 21 October 2017, off whitelist and listed in the verse's sources, for the Mother London spot in which a family celebrates overlooked small achievements (a boy waking early, a grandfather finishing a crossword, a child learning to tie a shoelace) to an upbeat track by Jack White, directed by Patrick Daughters at Gorgeous, and for the platform having begun in early 2014. https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/21/ad-the-day-ikeas-wonderful-everyday-returns-colourful-fantasia-style-spot Campaign, "Ikea 'The wonderful everyday is coming' by Mother London", 4 October 2017, listed in the verse's sources as launch coverage, which in fact covers the 2017 poster campaign for IKEA's new Sheffield store, photographed by Carl Kleiner, for the line still carrying UK campaigns in 2017. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ikea-the-wonderful-everyday-coming-mother-london/1446417
8. Campaign, "Campaign of the Year 2014: Ikea", December 2014, for The Wonderful Everyday as Campaign's Campaign of the Year 2014, whose standfirst describes "The dreamy 'the wonderful everyday' campaign" as multichannel activity reinforcing the retailer's message that its products can help people live harmoniously and sustainably; the article body sits behind Campaign's login. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/campaign-year-2014-ikea/1326004 Campaign, Laurent Tiersen and Katie Mackay, "Ikea and the pursuit of everyday wonder: How the retailer revived its fortunes", undated on the retrievable page, for a Campaign long-read on how IKEA and Mother turned around the brand's decline, the one trade-press long-read found, which on its own does not show repeated citation as a benchmark; the listed campaignlive.com address redirects to the URL below, and only the headline and standfirst were retrievable on 26 September 2026. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ikea-and-the-pursuit-of-everyday-wonder-how-the-retailer-revived-its-fortunes/418xpg1aqt7b5w6zq9sncvdx59
9. IKEA Museum, "IKEA and advertising", undated, retrieved 26 September 2026, for "Where life happens" as a campaign by IKEA Sweden and the Åkestam Holst NoA agency, dated there 2016 to 2017. The page does not mention Mother, The Wonderful Everyday or the line "Life is more wonderful with someone to share it with". https://ikeamuseum.com/en/explore/the-story-of-ikea/ikea-and-advertising/
