March 24, 2015
IKEA is banning hide-and-seek, kids
While many stores are plotting ways to encourage experiential engagement with shoppers, hide-and-seek apparently crosses the line. IKEA last week banned the game in the Netherlands for safety reasons after finding numerous such events organized by adults popping up across the region.
Finding that guerilla versions of the game proved popular in the furniture retailer’s cavernous stores in Holland, Australia and the Czech Republic in prior years, IKEA granted permission for one game of hide-and-seek in a Belgium store last July to fulfill a customer’s wish on her list of 30 things to do before her thirtieth birthday. About 500 people hid in under-bed storage areas, inside refrigerators, behind curtains, in bins and elsewhere on the day.
The Belgium game caught fire on social media and reportedly prompted more than 19,000 to sign up on Facebook for a hide-and-seek event at a store in Amsterdam in April. Another 12,000-plus had signed up for an event in Utrecht. Both would have easily broke the Guinness World Record for largest hide-and-seek game ever.
"It’s hard to control," IKEA Group spokeswoman Martina Smedberg told Bloomberg on the reasons for the subsequent ban. "We need to make sure people are safe in our stores and that’s hard to do if we don’t even know where they are."
IKEA’s U.S. corporate public relations director Mona Astra Liss told Today.com that fun and playfulness remains an integral part of the store’s culture for both customers and co-workers. She said, "Togetherness is a guiding principal that permeates the way we conduct our business."
The hide-and-seek occurrences come as social media has spawned "flash mob" theatrical productions inside stores and public places that go viral via YouTube. It’s also not uncommon to find weddings taking place inside stores between co-workers or loyal customers, often after closing hours, but still gaining play across social media. Speed dating events are sometimes run in stores, particularly around Valentine’s Day.
As part of the experiential trend, many stores are also using cocktails, coffee, free manicures, live bands/DJs or simply Wi-Fi lounges to play up the social nature of brick & mortar that shoppers can’t get online.
- IKEA Stamps Out Hide-and-Seek Games in Furniture Stores – Bloomberg
- IKEA foils plans for massive games of hide-and-seek – Today
- Nr. 17 Verstoppertje spelen in IKEA – Facebook
- Flash Mobs Have More to Teach About Managing Teams Than Any Textbook – Entrepreneur
- Guerilla games: thousands to hit IKEA for game of hide and seek – The Age
- Free beer, coffee and Wi-Fi: Retail stores shift strategy in response to rise in ecommerce – Oregonian
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Are experiential events for stores worth the risks? What lessons should be learned about IKEA’s hide-and-seek phenomenon?
Poll
Retailers need to balance the rewards of being different with the risks of experiential events. Sometimes when you think you have it figured out, consumers take to social media and muck it all up. It’s a hazard of doing business in the Internet age.
As to IKEA, they made a conscious decision to turn their stores into giant mazes, they live with the consequences.
Sadly this “fear of living” mentality goes far beyond hide-and-seek games in IKEA stores. The need to monitor risk exposure within an actual store is understandable of course. The telling phrase is “It’s hard to control” and control is our national obsession. Becoming a risk-less society will ruin us in the same way a risk-less company is not likely to survive. The worst slogan of all time is “Failure is not an option.” Want to fail quickly? Adopt that slogan.
It’s a bit of a leap, but my mind went to some research being done in Canada involving kids and athletics. For a lot of us who wonder how we lived this long given that we played with abandon as kids, what they’re finding will have you shaking your head in disbelief.
The observation is that kids are actually forgetting how to run.
Running and risk are sibling experiences. Both are essential to human existence and it’s been that way since the beginning of time.
Mob scenes can ruin good fun. To make such events practical, how about picking random frequent shoppers or some sort of drawing of those interested?
Mass adult hide and seek in a cavernous furniture warehouse showroom sounds like some giddy, perilous fun. What could possibly go wrong?
I have a sinking feeling the insurance agents probably have a long list of possibilities, which may have led IKEA to rein in this activity.
Too bad, really, but IKEA is not operating amusement parks.
This is a fine way to leverage social and get the attendees to push the brand. The legal issues are easy to cover. Simply, if you are involved at the store for a special event we are not liable.
The problem is that the people that are really shopping need to get things done and spend money. Banning it in the Netherlands was probably due to regular customers getting fed up with it. So, hats of to IKEA—leverage social but do not let trenders ruin business and obstruct serving real shoppers.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see where IKEA is “banning…kids” (and I was all ready to comment on THAT). As for the hide-and-seek issue, IKEA can—and I’m sure it does—find comfort in the fact that that its stores are ingrained as a social phenomenon.
Experiential events are good and can be done in a much safer way with the right technology, mobile, augmented reality etc. But this hide and seek is just the tip of a dangerous trend. Some kids in my local IKEA like to race the carts. The IKEA carts are unique in that all wheels turn, it’s a little bit harder to control, but much more maneuverable and makes for an interesting race—but it is super dangerous.
Banning it may aggravate the wrong type of people, although I certainly don’t see why not. Here is a crazy idea: Just charge the organizer for it. It’s the “cleanup fee,” make them sign a massive legal document and make it hard enough that no one wants to do it. At the end of the day, IKEA is a retailer and they probably don’t have the time to be managing games. Banning is not a bad option.
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Retailers need to balance the rewards of being different with the risks of experiential events. Sometimes when you think you have it figured out, consumers take to social media and muck it all up. It’s a hazard of doing business in the Internet age.
As to IKEA, they made a conscious decision to turn their stores into giant mazes, they live with the consequences.
Sadly this “fear of living” mentality goes far beyond hide-and-seek games in IKEA stores. The need to monitor risk exposure within an actual store is understandable of course. The telling phrase is “It’s hard to control” and control is our national obsession. Becoming a risk-less society will ruin us in the same way a risk-less company is not likely to survive. The worst slogan of all time is “Failure is not an option.” Want to fail quickly? Adopt that slogan.
It’s a bit of a leap, but my mind went to some research being done in Canada involving kids and athletics. For a lot of us who wonder how we lived this long given that we played with abandon as kids, what they’re finding will have you shaking your head in disbelief.
The observation is that kids are actually forgetting how to run.
Running and risk are sibling experiences. Both are essential to human existence and it’s been that way since the beginning of time.
Mob scenes can ruin good fun. To make such events practical, how about picking random frequent shoppers or some sort of drawing of those interested?
Mass adult hide and seek in a cavernous furniture warehouse showroom sounds like some giddy, perilous fun. What could possibly go wrong?
I have a sinking feeling the insurance agents probably have a long list of possibilities, which may have led IKEA to rein in this activity.
Too bad, really, but IKEA is not operating amusement parks.
This is a fine way to leverage social and get the attendees to push the brand. The legal issues are easy to cover. Simply, if you are involved at the store for a special event we are not liable.
The problem is that the people that are really shopping need to get things done and spend money. Banning it in the Netherlands was probably due to regular customers getting fed up with it. So, hats of to IKEA—leverage social but do not let trenders ruin business and obstruct serving real shoppers.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see where IKEA is “banning…kids” (and I was all ready to comment on THAT). As for the hide-and-seek issue, IKEA can—and I’m sure it does—find comfort in the fact that that its stores are ingrained as a social phenomenon.
Experiential events are good and can be done in a much safer way with the right technology, mobile, augmented reality etc. But this hide and seek is just the tip of a dangerous trend. Some kids in my local IKEA like to race the carts. The IKEA carts are unique in that all wheels turn, it’s a little bit harder to control, but much more maneuverable and makes for an interesting race—but it is super dangerous.
Banning it may aggravate the wrong type of people, although I certainly don’t see why not. Here is a crazy idea: Just charge the organizer for it. It’s the “cleanup fee,” make them sign a massive legal document and make it hard enough that no one wants to do it. At the end of the day, IKEA is a retailer and they probably don’t have the time to be managing games. Banning is not a bad option.