IKEA Advert - Come Home to Play

Ad agency Mother London and Encyclopedia Pictura director Daren Rabinovitch have created this new ad for Ikea as part of its Wonderful Everyday campaign. The advert's narrative follows 3 fantastical characters; a bird a bat and a robot as they start their fantasy adventure. Suddenly the path reaches a cliff end, leaving the robot no choice but to try and fly in order to continue his adventure with the bird and bat who have wings. This comes with many failed attempts but using his jet propulsion he finally becomes air-borne as they fly through the clouds. At the end it is revealed that it is all in imaginary world conjured from the minds of 2 young children and their dad. 

After you have seen the ending and know that its one make-believe world, you see the advert in a new light. The dad is revealed to be the robot, therefore we can interpret from this that all the robots failed attempts at flying could represent the dad "fuelling" the imagination and fun, or it could also represent his lacking of imagination compared to the children who are flying high.

The director Rabinovitch commented, “The world was inspired by fantasy illustrations, sci-fi covers, psychedelic visionary paintings, animation, fantasy films, and kid’s books of all kinds.” Which is evident! The classic Encyclopedia Pictura style. All these factors combine to create this dystopian fantasy world, full of wonder, packed full of imagination, perfectly reflective of the children's minds. The music that goes along with it also enhances this fantasy world as it resembles the music of a magical fairground. I think the fact that there are animation visual effects involved to create this fantastical setting, also enhances the imagination because animation is the medium of film where you can make your animation come alive!

Thinking about its effectiveness as a commercial, all these imaginative features reflect onto IKEA itself, branding itself as an imaginative and unique company, capable of making children's minds come alive with their products. Along with the slogan "come home to play", depicting how they can supply your home with all the elements needed for a good childrens play time.

I even took time to watch the making of video, which was really facinating to watch as an animator. You can see how they composited the visual effects such as the clouds, and texturised the fire from his rocked boots in an illustrative style. They even showed the pre-production process, from the animatic, background designs which looked beautiful and puppet making and modelling techniques.