Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Making of a Medley
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
Photo of an ad near Front Street and John Street by John Kannenberg from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
Ah, IKEA. Bastion of the comfortably quirky; originator of accessible (read: cheap) design; first stop for first apartment decorators everywhere.
Also: alleged destroyer of forests, purported greenwasher, and now confirmed defiler of public space.
A short while ago IKEA launched a "guerrilla" ad campaign for its new "Any space can be beautiful" contest, coinciding with the upcoming launch of their annual catalogue. The campaign consisted of—depending on whom you ask—either spray-painted or chalked ads which popped up on walls, sidewalks, and storefronts in several Canadian cities. They first drew ire in Vancouver when a store owner there found one of these yellow badges on his freshly primed, about-to-be-painted wall, and the outrage has followed the ads as they spread across the land. Toronto Councillor Howard Moscoe, who is chair of the Licensing and Standards Committee and has a long-standing interest in ad creep, sent a cease and desist letter to Kerri Molinaro, President of IKEA Canada, shortly after these ads started appearing on our city's streets.
In response, IKEA backpedalled faster than you can say "Billy bookcase," apologizing for the inconvenience and assuring the good councillor, along with the people of Toronto, that the campaign "was not intended to be disruptive to any store fronts or public places." (Interjection. Surely the point of painting bright yellow signs on public spaces is precisely to disrupt their usual appearance and call attention to themselves?!) "[W]e are very proud of our environmental responsibility," Molinaro's response to Moscoe continued, "and in hindsight, this campaign was not reflective of our environmental stewardship."
Well, actually, it was.
Photo of an ad at Spadina Avenue and Phoebe Street by Steve Kupferman/Torontoist.
Given that IKEA's environmental stewardship has recently been called into serious question, this botched ad campaign seems entirely fitting. Corporate guerrilla art is to real guerrilla art as corporate claims regarding environmental responsibility are to real environmental responsibility. That is: they piggyback off the genuine article but aren't necessarily as they appear.
Ellen Ruppel Shell, co-director of the Knight Center for Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University, has just published a book on the effects of manufacturing and selling goods at rock-bottom prices, and IKEA is one of its main targets. According to Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, IKEA—the third largest global consumer of wood—sources many of its raw materials from regions where illegal logging is rampant and proper oversight is deeply inadequate. Moreover, the disposability of IKEA's wares, and the suburban location of its big-box stores (forcing customers to travel by car to make their purchases, or even exchange faulty small parts), speak to a fundamental disregard for environmental considerations for which all the low-watt bulbs in the world (with which IKEA lights its stores) cannot compensate. In the words of one expert Ruppel Shell consulted, “IKEA is the least sustainable retailer on the planet.”
Over the last few days the ads have, as per Moscoe's request, been removed from our streets. The taint that now haunts the IKEA coffee table we were once so excited to bring home will take longer to scrub off.
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I don't think they were making any attempt to disguise their ads as art of any sort, and calling it guerrilla (anything) is a bit of a misnomer when it directs you to an Ikea-branded site.
That said, Ikea should be fined for this, and if the city did any of the cleaning, charged for the cost of cleaning. Ikea has the resources to buy ad space in any Toronto publication it wants, or on any billboard, so there's really no excuse.
I think IKEA are gaining by the reportage on this - I'd have blurred out the website name at any rate.
Why does every post about advertising have at least one hand-wringing comment like this? Good journalism doesn't advertise, yes, but good journalism also doesn't smudge out harmless information to protect the impressionable public from its supposed inability to resist even secondhand exposure to Ikea's omnipotent advertising. Good journalism prioritizes accurate coverage of an interesting story, not a sense of desperation that one's damning criticism could be converted into a shopping frenzy by stupid readers.
Journalistic priorities aside, the vastly over-generalized axiom that "any publicity is good publicity" only holds water in the minority of cases; when the marketer's lone goal was to increase brand recognition and the news coverage didn't poison consumers against it. Any marketer can verify that getting exposure isn't equivalent to getting profits - ask Maple Leaf Foods. Even in those rare cases, what's with this "shame on you, you inadvertently helped the subject you wrote about" finger-wagging? And why is it only applied to big business?
Ugh, whatever. This isn't just to you, dowlingm, it's to an ongoing history of comments like yours, most of which are dripping with triumphant accusation, which obviously yours isn't.
The badvertising paradox strikes again!
So, instead of blindly quoting the Globe and Mail which blindly quotes some American guy's book, how about offering some proof yourself? "[S]ources many of its raw materials from regions where illegal logging is rampant and proper oversight is deeply inadequate" sounds awful, but does anyone actually have proof their wood is illegally logged? Regarding "regions", are we talking subcontinents, countries, states, specific forests? Or are we just saying "it's cheap and corporate so it must be bad"?
Further, the "suburban location of its big-box stores" is hilariously inapplicable here, what with not one, but two IKEAs shuttling customers to the TTC - and subway at that. As in, you won't even have to go to Mississauga, or step your pretty foot in an Orion. "[F]orcing customers to travel by car to make their purchases," not quite!
This.
The Leslie & Sheppard store is right in between two subway stops. Also now that those extra roadways around there are done, it's even more accessible on foot.
The big issue with the store locations is for the most part in the U.S., where they do tend to be placed much farther from public transit and—just as importantly—IKEA does not offer home delivery. We (i.e. Torontonians) can take the TTC to at least some locations, place our orders, and have IKEA bring the large items to our homes. In America there is no such choice, and so the only way to get your goods home (at least the large ones) is to bring a vehicle and haul them yourself. Many of these stores regularly issue requests that customers shop during the week as the backups at the parking lots on weekends extend to unmanageable lengths.
Oh, and the illegal logging is based primarily in Eastern Europe, and in the Russian Far East. (In the latter region the World Bank has found half of all logging to be illegal.)
Everything in the U.S. tends to be placed much farther from public transit.
Of course IKEA isn't going to buy wood in B.C. or Oregon, but I haven't seen proof or grounds for reasonable suspicion that the wood they do buy has been logged illegally. (As it happens, very distant family of mine owns a legal logging operation in Eastern Europe.)
Gviri, because your skepticism is so reasonable I'd like to offer you a tour of Ikea's illegal Eastern European logging operation. It'll feature Kerri Molinaro personally cutting down eight trees, hauling them over to a mill and creating a Boliden armchair. I'm not sure it'll be enough to convince you of Ikea's practices but it'll be a start, right?
If you throw in airfare there and back, I am so in.
I was wondering what those yellow rectangles spray-painted on the street were about. I thought it was part of a guerrilla gardening project or some other variation of urban space activism. I agree with Rek, IKEA should be fined for this and charged for any cleaning the city has done because of their viral marketing campaign.
The Vaughan IKEA store actually fits the "suburban location" description. Situated within a maze of plazas and roads, you'd be hard-pressed to navigate it on foot without being cautious of drivers using the roads as fast shortcuts.
Before I checked the site, I thought maybe it was for a new HGTV series about designing public space.
(I wish it was.)
Ugh. At best, it's blatant astroturfing. I'm relieved to hear that they'll have to clean up their mess!
No... It's not.
But way to smugly incorporate a word so "buzz" that you had to reference the definition.
I don't think there was any intention for this to appear "grassroots". Guerrilla and grassroots are not synonymous. Neither are "free" and "grassroots".
I go to both Ikeas on the TTC. But the location is mostly irrelevant to me because if I was buying large items or multiple items that I couldn't carry, I'd need a car or some form of delivery regardless of where the store is.
This afternoon I caught a woman stealing one of the Ikea catalogues delivered to my apartment building. In all likelihood she had one waiting for her at home. No shame.