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Hello and welcome back to How to Build Brands and Influence People, your veckosammanfattning for the creator economy. I’m Alex Rawitz, Director of Research & Insights at CreatorIQ, and as anyone who knows me or takes Zoom calls with me is aware, I have a frequent need for bookshelves. I read a lot, and the books have a habit of stacking up. And with apologies to our friends at Amazon, I’m a hard copy guy, so no kindle for me. (Though if you’re moved to send me one for free…)
I’ve recently done some much-needed redecorating. Visitors to my various apartments have been known to ask whether I had just moved in or was about to move out. A friend, upon learning of my plans to redecorate, asked whether I would be getting “an art” for the walls, which until recently I’ve always kept blank.
Well, now I won’t have to suffer any more snide and perfectly justified remarks! Come on—look at these bookshelves!
Pretty nifty, no? There’s even an art for the wall, even if I haven’t, uh, actually affixed it to said wall.
And yes, I have in fact read all of those books. My favorite is fourth from the right, third row from the top, in the right-most bookshelf.
Do you know who I have to thank for this considerable aesthetic improvement?
Even if it weren’t for the bookshelves, I would still have a soft spot for everyone’s favorite Swedish megastore. (Sorry, Gekås Ullared AB.)
For one thing, I always appreciate a set of clear instructions. For another, CreatorIQ’s San Francisco office is part of the Hej!Workshop complex, a coworking and community space developed in partnership with IKEA. And for yet another thing, whenever I visit the SF office, I make sure to grab a plate of IKEA’s real best product:
Mmm…huvudroll.
But it’s not just the bookshelves or the meatballs, folks: it’s the growth story. After all, it wouldn’t be HBBIP (which, come to think of it, kind of sounds like an IKEA product) without one.
Because IKEA is a global brand—beloved in its native Sweden, with close ties to Europe, and plenty popular right here in the US of A, I decided to look at worldwide, European, and U.S. data. While there are broadly similar patterns to draw across these three markets, the interesting story, as per usual, emerges in the distinctions.
First, here’s IKEA’s U.S. post count. This might be the first time I’ve ever shown a graph of this nature in HBBIP, so check it out:
In a complete inverse of everything we love and hold dear, the values here went down every year. In fact, IKEA’s content essentially halved itself from 83.6k posts in 2020 to 49.6k posts in 2024. Was this the result of a shrinking creator count?
IKEA Creator Count (US): 2020 - 2024
Not really: just a somewhat stagnant one. But Alex, you’re surely saying to yourself right now, I thought you wrote about brands that are growing? Surely a brand can’t grow with these sorts of post and creator count figures, right?
Wrong.
IKEA saw consistent year-over-year improvements to its impressions:
And its engagements.
Doing more with less isn’t just an ethos for IKEA’s furniture (or meatballs)—it’s the driving force behind the brands’ U.S. metrics at large!
While the changes shown above weren’t as stark in Europe or globally, a similar dynamic emerged in both markets:
So pretty much everywhere, IKEA is expanding its social footprint despite appearing in fewer posts from fewer creators. That’s a pretty rare feat. How exactly is the brand pulling it off?
When I went into the channel data for the U.S., Europe, and globally, it painted a more complex picture than I’d anticipated. This isn’t one of those stories where we can just chalk up the growth to TikTok and call it a day. IKEA is seeing growth on TikTok across all three markets, but the main differentiator for the U.S. market is actually a different social platform.
Check out the charts of IKEA’s impressions by channel in the U.S. versus in Europe and globally, and you’ll see what I mean. Generally, the big three channels (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) fuel up to 95% of IKEA’s impressions in each market, but the way things break down differs from place to place.
Here we have the U.S., where YouTube constitutes an outright plurality: 1.1B of IKEA’s 2.8B impressions:
But things look pretty different in Europe, where Instagram reigns supreme, and YouTube is negligible:
All of this netted out to a midpoint when you look at IKEA’s impressions by channel globally:
Another interesting wrinkle? This discrepancy isn’t based on content volume. Turns out that Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube combine to generate just 60% of IKEA’s posts in the U.S., and 70% both in Europe and globally. Where are the other posts coming from?
A lot of places, as it turns out, but mostly Pinterest. Surprise! I did not have Pinterest ranking second only to Instagram in the year 2025 on my bingo card for HBBIP, but it makes sense given IKEA’s status as one of the go-to names in home decor. After all, the beginning of this newsletter was basically me sharing my board.
Still, the question remains: why is the U.S. so YouTube-heavy for IKEA? You might think that IKEA’s U.S. creator population possesses a much higher share of YouTubers than the brand’s European fanbase. You’d be right, since it does, but you’d also be wrong, since the difference is fairly small: 5.4% of IKEA’s European creators were YouTubers, compared to 6% in the U.S. So clearly, that U.S. population was punching above its weight.
Looking at IKEA’s creator population, four out the brand’s top five global EMV-drivers were U.S.-based creators (or boasted a sizable U.S. audience), and maintained either a primary presence on YouTube or were extremely active on the channel:
While these YouTubers sometimes mentioned IKEA in only tangential ways, the brand was also buoyed by home decor creators, particularly on YouTube, who went into specifics about their favorite IKEA offerings, including Nina Aleksa and Angel Dei. The result was a mixed cohort of lifestyle creators who advocated for the brand across a range of platforms and content types.
From YouTube to TikTok to Pinterest (!), IKEA’s creator program shows that, much like its products, you can always do more with less. I’m excited to see where the brand goes next with its marknadsföringsstrategi för kreatörer!
And yes, that’s ‘creator marketing strategy’ in Swedish. Half the point of writing this was for that joke, so I hope you enjoyed it.
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