By Hamutal Dotan

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.