In Copenhagen, IKEA has decided to tackle a misconception by turning it into a creative opportunity. Thanks to the store’s central location, many have long assumed the city IKEA is aimed almost exclusively at small items—easy-to-grab accessories you can slip into a bag or carry under your arm. But the reality is different, and the brand chose to tell that story in the most direct way possible: by using one of its most recognizable symbols as the message—its cardboard boxes.

With an outdoor campaign spread across the city, IKEA wraps buses, shelters, and scaffolding in gigantic flat-pack boxes, turning everyday urban surfaces into extensions of its visual universe. The brown cardboard, the exaggerated proportions, the essential graphics—everything points straight back to the IKEA world. Completing the picture is a single line, clear and impossible to misread: “Now the larger items are also in stock”.

The idea works precisely because it doesn’t try to impress with special effects—it plays on what’s obvious. As creative lead Jonas Quist Nielsen explains, it’s one of those concepts that feels right from the very first moment. So natural, in fact, that two different teams arrived at the same insight independently. No product takes center stage, no sofa or wardrobe is shown explicitly—just an invitation to imagine. The flat-pack, the brand’s ultimate icon, becomes the perfect way to talk about big furniture without actually showing it.

There’s also an ironic edge that makes the campaign even more effective. Wrapping a bus or a building as if it were an IKEA product creates an immediate visual jolt—something that surprises and makes you smile. An operation that, judging by the feedback, doesn’t go unnoticed and manages to be genuinely enjoyable to look at. In a city like Copenhagen, where public space is an integral part of everyday life, IKEA manages to overturn a long-held perception with a simple, coherent gesture, perfectly aligned with its identity.