“Ikea what you doing???”

TDT | Manama

“Genius marketing move, or a rookie mistake?” Netizens all over the world had their jaws dropped to the floor after spotting IKEA Bahrain’s storefront marketing tagline.  Which in English read: “‘Create your perfect night’s sleep” on a picture of showing their sleep collection.  The catch, however, was in the Arabic translation immediately below. It reads: “The same as written, but in Arabic.” 

The hilarious mistake exploded on social media, after Sneha, a Bahrain-based copywriter, posted a photo of the storefront blunder on her Twitter handle @FlirtingKaapi.  Along with the image, she wrote: “Ikeaaaaa what you doing??? P.S the Arabic copy says, “Same text but in Arabic.”

In another post she wrote,” For those getting confused, I am talking about the Arabic copy under, ‘Create your perfect night’s sleep’ and not the copy under ‘IKEA’ .” Netizens embraced the post some with budged eyes and several others with laughing emojis rolling on the floor with tears. In short, Twitterati had a field day over the blunder. 

By then IKEA too managed to spot what they had done on their storefront.  They changed it quickly, but in a tasteful way.  After striking down the “The same as written, but in Arabic” tag line, they added another, also in Arabic, just below.  This time it read: “This is what happens when you don’t get good sleep. Enjoy your perfect sleep” @IKEABH. 

Sneha posted the new image on her twitter handle.  Many comments also made their way under the post, reacting to the hilarious gaffe.  Among them, one user got curious about how Sneha spotted the error. “do you know Arabic or used Google lens?” In her reply to the post, she wrote: “My Arab friends told me so! Being here for a while now, I can read a bit but still need loads of help.”  

Another user @rudy_waltz drew peoples attention towards something similar happened in Hungary. In that case, the store wrote: “Same in English” as a translation of the sentence above.  Some sceptics also joined the party, asking: “if it was intentional, or not?” “If its on purpose, its a genius move! If it isn’t, they better make it look like it was on purpose,” wrote @vividBharati. 

Several others also felt the same.  According to them, the mistake was on purpose - “an intelligent move as it was able to catch its audience attention.” Shortly after David Griner of Adweek wrote, “In the marketing world, the line between an embarrassing mistake and well-crafted opportunity is a notoriously blurry one.

Companies (and the US president) often say their gaffes were actually intentional, leaving many to decide for themselves.” “I had a lot of fun chatting with Bahrain-based @FlirtingKaapi about whether this was intentional or just a well-handled flub,” wrote @griner.  Whatever it was, the end result as Sneha pointed out in one of her posts is “Ingenious. It is going viral here without any paid media. Everyone knows about Ikea’s new sleep collection now.”