Ikea renamed its products after your most pressing relationship questions


Swedish furniture giant Ikea took the concept of "retail therapy" literally in its new advertising campaign, which renames the company's products with the most popular relationship questions on Google.
A double bed normally called Oppland, for example, is now named "How to have a happy relationship." There's a pair of scissors for those who googled "My son plays too much computer games" — a little cord-cutting, perhaps? — as well as champagne glasses for "When children leave home;" a lantern for "My boyfriend doesn't see me;" and, more ominously, a drill set for "Hard to get teenager out of bed."
The premise, explained the marketing agency behind the campaign, is that Ikea is "designed to solve everyday dilemmas" and — though unlikely to fix your relationship — "might be able to offer you some relief." The product description for each renamed piece cheerily explains it has a new title based on "the relationship problem you just googled. All to make life at home easier for you. Because life evolves every day and everything, yes everything, can get better."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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