IKEA hid the mess behind its billboards in real SAMLA storage boxes for its latest campaign

IKEA Sweden put a perfectly tidy living room on a billboard. Then it hid everything required to make that room look so tidy directly behind it.

The new outdoor campaign for SAMLA storage boxes turns the back of each billboard into the part of the home people normally keep out of sight. Toys, clothes, electronics, old records, children’s drawings and other everyday clutter are packed into transparent SAMLA boxes stacked behind the ad.

From the front, everything looks organised. Walk around it and you see where all the mess went.

Behind every tidy room, there is a SAMLA

The front of the billboard looks like a familiar IKEA room set. Clean furniture. Clear surfaces. Everything sitting exactly where it should.

The headline reads, “Behind every tidy room, there’s SAMLA from 29:-.”

The important word is “behind.”

Instead of simply showing the storage boxes beside the furniture, IKEA physically placed them on the other side of the billboard. People walking past could move around the installation and discover a wall of transparent boxes filled with the kind of things that make real homes messy.

The product was doing its job before anyone bought it.

IKEA showed the part of its rooms we normally never see

IKEA advertising has spent decades showing people what an organised home could look like. This campaign adds the missing half of that picture.

A clean room does not mean the stuff disappeared. It means someone found somewhere to put it.

That is particularly useful for SAMLA. The transparent plastic boxes are designed to store everything from small household items to clothes and larger belongings while keeping the contents visible.

IKEA did not need a complicated demonstration. It filled the boxes with ordinary clutter and stacked them behind an ordinary room.

One side showed the result. The other showed how it happened.

83% of Swedes have a room they struggle to keep tidy

The idea came from a problem IKEA found was extremely common.

Its research found that 83% of people in Sweden have at least one room at home that is difficult to keep tidy. Closets ranked as the hardest space to organise, followed by garages and attics, kitchen counters, kitchen cupboards and bathrooms.

That makes the mess behind the billboard less of an exaggeration than it first appears.

The boxes contain the exact kind of things that slowly take over a home. Toys that have nowhere permanent to live. Clothes waiting to be sorted. Old electronics. Half-finished drawings. Objects that are useful enough to keep but annoying enough to leave lying around.

SAMLA gives all of them somewhere to disappear without actually disappearing.

The billboard became the product demonstration

NoA Åkestam Holst created the campaign for IKEA Sweden. The installations began appearing in major Swedish cities at the end of August 2026, with the idea also extending into social and digital media.

The strongest part is how little explanation it needs.

A photograph of SAMLA boxes would have shown what the product looks like. A beautifully organised room would have shown the end result. IKEA connected the two by making the physical billboard itself the storage system.

The front sells the dream.

Everything behind it explains how you get there.

Credits

SAMLA outdoor campaign (2026) | IKEA Sweden. Agency: NoA Åkestam Holst. Art Director: Tiago Pinho. Marketing Communication Leader, IKEA Sweden: Jonas Westberg. Campaign launched across major Swedish cities in August 2026, with social and digital extensions.