Ikea Hacks

Ikeahacker.blogspot.com encourages people to send in alternative uses they have found for Ikea products. From enamel-painted lamps (pictured above) and dining room dog-beds to bookcases-turned-beds, there are a whole host of ingenious, alternative uses for Ikea furniture.

There are also forums with ideas, advice and sneak peeks of in-progress projects. 2006's best hacks include a pillow-case come skirt and inspiration the author has found on Flickr and been e.mailed directly. There's even 'The Genius Ikea Hack Contest' offering prizes of 'Genius Pads' for the most genius idea for an Ikea hack.

This sort of competition may well have informed Ikea's own marketing strategy. Working with Shycast they've recently encouraged users to create videos based on the brand. Asking people to "break the rules of bed making" there is a $5,000 first prize for the best entry. Joe Mandese identifies this as an attempt to eye real-world behaviour of their fanatical consumers amd Shycast's Mr Peloso talks of "users becoming quasi celebrity spokesman" for the brand, in the future perhaps even doing press tours "treating them like endorsers, because they have ideas that the media would like to hear".

This kind of competition is an interesting niche for Shycast as they can tap into promotional budgets as opposed to targeting traditional PR, TV or search budgets.