The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
IKEA Norway 'Made for Life': strict price points tell life's hard stories — Cannes Gold
TRY Oslo lets IKEA's strict price points and product names narrate infertility, infidelity and dementia in 11 films — Norway's first Gold in Film at Cannes.
IKEA Norway
What it had to solve
IKEA Norway was launching a new communications platform, 'Made for Life' (Laget for livet), built with TRY Oslo. The brief was to show how IKEA products are actually used in real lives — the good days, the hard days, and everything between — instead of glossy catalogue moments.
How it works
In June 2025 IKEA Norway launched 'Made for Life' (Laget for livet), a new communications platform developed with TRY Oslo. Marketing communication manager Annika Mørch Asté said the goal was to show how IKEA products are actually used — 'the good days, the hard days, and all the everyday moments in between' — and that life consists of more than Instagram moments.
The launch work comprised 11 short films plus print and outdoor. Instead of story-first advertising, TRY let the well-known, strict IKEA price points and product names tell real, honest stories: infertility, infidelity, dementia, widowhood, student life, parties and picky toddlers. Each narrative grows visually from one product to the next, so a hard human moment becomes, step by step, a room full of IKEA objects.
The films were produced by Bacon and directed by Jakob Marky, with DoP Benjamin Loeb; creatives Caroline Riis and Eirik Sørensen had already challenged the classic IKEA style in TRY's earlier IKEA campaigns. The Cannes jury praised the work for being simple yet beautiful in expression.
At Cannes Lions 2026 the campaign took three Lions — Gold in Film (TRY's first in the category), Gold in Industry Craft and Bronze in Industry Craft — and was the first Norwegian job ever to win two golds at the festival. Before Cannes it had collected four D&AD Wood Pencils, the Epica Grand Prix and two Epica golds, a Eurobest gold and the Gullblyanten Grand Prix.
Why it lands
- The insight is that ordinary product facts can carry extraordinary emotion — price points become lines of a life story.
- Each film grows from one product to the next, making the room itself the narrative arc.
- Choosing uncomfortable truths (infertility, infidelity, dementia) signals the brand is present for the whole of life, not just the polished parts.
- The flat, almost artless delivery makes the hard moments land harder than any melodrama.
- Consistency across 11 films plus print turned a campaign into a platform the brand could build on for years.
What it did
The campaign won three Cannes Lions in 2026 — Gold in Film (TRY's first), Gold in Industry Craft and Bronze in Industry Craft — making it the first Norwegian job ever to win two golds at Cannes. It had already taken four D&AD Wood Pencils, the Epica Grand Prix plus two golds, a Eurobest gold and the Gullblyanten Grand Prix.
What you can take
Let the product's most banal facts carry the emotion: strict price points and product names, honestly arranged, can tell harder stories than any slogan — restraint is what makes them land.
Since then
The campaign became the launch platform for IKEA Norway's communications. Its 2026 awards run included four D&AD Wood Pencils, the Epica Grand Prix, a Eurobest gold, the Gullblyanten Grand Prix and three Cannes Lions. For TRY it was the third Cannes gold for IKEA in four years, after 'The Trash Collection' (2022) and 'The Life Collection' (2023), and the first Norwegian Gold in Film — proof that a small market could compete with Nike, Claude and Apple budgets through story alone. The films spread beyond Scandinavia, and the platform set the tone for IKEA Norway's later seasonal campaigns.
Sources
- TRY og IKEA vant sjeldent norsk gull i Film på Cannes Lions
- IKEA - Made for Life (D&AD Awards Archive)
- IKEA Norway's 'Made for Life' campaign tells real stories behind everyday moments
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