Jim, it counts and it’s always going to be better than a negative story. But clients I’m speaking to want to know that if they are spending anything from £5,000 – £100,000 on social media campaigns what they are going to get back out of it. For some, increased chatter and brand awareness is enough. But for others, they want to see a financial return on their spend. They want to make a profit or sales increase. See my post to the side of this about what most people don’t tell you about social media.

This is what I said that it’s always handy to make sure the goals are defined at the start.

It’s even more ironic than that when you consider that the talking about failure then made it a success (in terms of eyeballs anyway).

Gordon, I can see and appreciate where you are coming from. In fact I agree with most of it. Yes, it has more people going ‘cool’ but you ask the salient question: has it made anyone more likely to buy from Ikea? Has it increased turnover? As you say, it’s anything but cool to you, implying that you aren’t likely to go and buy something from there even now (and many others will feel the same).

And again, this strikes me as more of a PR success for the marketing company as that’s what’s generated all the buzz, not the actual campaign, so both are benefitting.

It was a cool idea, nicely done, but I don’t think the reality justifies the hype.

On newspapers: I think there’s more than five years of shelf-life left but they are still handy for certain demographics. And I think we might see newspaper ads start to get more creative and engaging, which is what they should be doing instead of moaning about the sky falling in.

I appreciate your comments, but can I ask why – when your IP address of 212.247.38.166 shows you to be posting from http://www.fb.se/ which is the website of Swedish creative company Forsman & Bodenfors AB who created this very Ikea Facebook campaign – why are you posting with a made-up name and a Hotmail account?

Dear Fan, thanks for the reply – and for the compliment of saying that I had interesting thoughts.
Firstly, I don’t normally feel the need to reveal IP addresses, but – as I am sure you are aware – there is a large concern over people going onto sites anonymously or under fake names and posting positive ‘reviews’ or sticking up for someone in a very positive fashion. What made me wonder about your posting was the fact that a) it was a Hotmail account (often used by people wanting to keep their ID hidden), b) you didn’t provide a name and c) your email address didn’t have a name in it – all of which made me go ‘hmmm’ and out of curiosity have a look at your IP address, which then showed it was someone posting from Forsman & Bodenfors AB IP address.

Now if you had come on and said ‘I work for Forsman & Bodenfors AB but wish to to keep my name private’ or ‘these are my private opinions, not that of my employer’ then that would have been fine – but the lack of disclosure makes many people suspicious. The history of the web is littered with examples of people trying to boost or promote items involving themselves or clients but trying to make it look like third-party approval by being anonymous.

(having said that, if you were posting on a personal basis from your work machine during office hours, make sure you aren’t in breach of your company’s HR policy)

And trust me, as someone who has had bollockings for his private opinions while at work, I would have fully understood wanting to stay anonymous. It was the way you did it that was so suspicious.

The points you made in your posting were fair, relevant and interesting – and best of all, helped us learn (I learned about untagging for example).

I’d also love it if someone from Forsman & Bodenfors AB wanted to come on here and talk about the campaign as it has certainly been brought to the attention of a lot of people now.

And you are more than welcome here any time. I’d even invite you to be a guest blogger if you wanted…