If you've ever wondered what an Ikea kitchen might look like if it were assembled in a frying pan, you're in luck.
A super cutesy new ad from BBH Asia Pacific features the furniture chain's Metod line of modular kitchen fixtures, getting whipped together as if they were ingredients on a cooking show. The ultimate meal? A miniature version of your next cooking station.
The whole concept is an elaborate visual metaphor built around a single pun. "Ikea's Metod system is about having fun creating your brand new kitchen," says Gaston Soto, a senior art director at the agency. "So we cooked one up just to show you how."
An overwrought approach like this is usually a mistake, but the design is shiny, clever and at moments adorable enough that it actually flies. Red cabinets are steaks. Lightbulbs are eggs. By the time the pollyanna hostess tosses in a handful of screws as seasoning, you'll be probably be considering a trip to the hospital. But once she starts washing her "hands," you might just submit to the tyranny of her charm.
There's even a plug for the catalog, or as she likes to call it, "the Ikea cookbook." (Or as literary critic Hellmuth Karasek and an Ikea spokesman likes to call it, in so many words, a sleep aid.)
All of which is to say, as tortured as the spot is, it's also fairly striking. Even if it's not the first miniature kitchen on the scene. And just so long as nobody actually has to eat it.
CREDITS
Client: Ikea (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand)
Agency: BBH Asia Pacific
Executive Creative Director: Scott McClelland
Creative Directors: Tinus Strydom, Maurice Wee
Senior Art Director: Gaston Soto
Senior Copywriter: Omar Sotomayor
Business Director: Bibiana Lee
Account Managers: Jade Cheng, Cheryl Cheong
Project Director: Lesley Chelvan
Head of Planning: James Sowden
Senior Planner: Rebecca Ash
Social Media Strategist: Josie Khng
Executive Producer: Daphne Ng
Producer: Samantha Dalton
Production House: 4 Humans
Director: Javier Laurenco
Director of Photography: Juan Maglione
Producer: Mechi Serrano
Music: Noroeste Música