Ikea. Junk furniture made with unsustainable materials manufactured and collated by exploited workers so we can have dilapidated and readily disposable crap in our shrinking living space.
Ikea is in the hot seat this month after being caught vandalizing hundreds of pieces of public and private property. Picture at upper-right: Unreal.
Given that IKEA’s environmental stewardship is more global wrecking ball than actual contributor to real solutions, their recent botched ad campaign seems entirely apropos – Corporate guerrilla art it’s called. They spray-paint (vandalize) public space in the name of corporate kitsch and coolness – and it bites.
Ikea. You stink and it ain’t the reek of laminate.
IKEA—third largest global consumer of wood— gets many of its raw materials from regions where illegal logging is rampant and environmental stewardship is as absent as your parents on your first big night out. IKEA’s wares, and the industrial location of its big-box stores (consumers have to travel by car to make their purchases, or even exchange faulty small parts), speak to a unfailing disregard for environmental consideration.
The hoo-haw around Ikea’s use of “chalk spray” graffiti to complement a TV ad campaign aimed at driving viewers to a website where they could enter a contest to win $15,000 worth of furniture – has caused them to back peddle faster than a RCMP officer at a taser inquiry.
The ads featured a yellow dotted line framing the slogan “Any Place Can Be Beautiful,” a website of the same name and “Aug. 10,” the date Ikea plans to deliver 5.5 million flyers to Canadian homes.
Although I have never been a fan of the crap that they sell, I am now even more resolved to never set foot in one of their soul crushing retail outlets. Shame on Ikea for stealing our public space and branding it for commercial gain.