IKEA Germany thought this would be a great way to promote the arrival of their new September catalogue. During August and September, the world got to watch Nils, a young German guy that IKEA locked away in a dull and lifeless apartment, living his daily life in his living room and waiting for the IKEA catalogue to arrive. And, just in case you didn’t believe this was for real, IKEA even provided Nils’ phone number, so you could call him up while watching it all live online! Once the catalogue arrived, we again got to watch Nils (still locked away) turn his dull and lifeless batchelor pad into a glowing example of the interior design goodiness IKEA has so famously brought to many a home!

The website is now closed, but we have included some snippets for your viewing pleasure.

Most people, when they develop a website for their company, decide to put up the typical mainstream jargon, like company history and staff profiles.  In most cases, this type of information isn’t particularly interesting and, if the truth be told, not one potential customer will probably ever read it - that’s right folks, not a one!

Now, have you ever thought about trying to smash your product with a wrecking ball, and then putting the footage up on your website - surely that would get people hooked? Actually, that’s the approach Smart cars adopted, with a refreshing new website devoted to dispelling some of the myths about the humble little car, all the while engaging consumers with humorous questions and riveting video.

Now don’t get us wrong, senseless acts and slapstick humour, while mildly amusing, is not the reason this website is so great. The success of this site lies in the fact that they decided to give you information that was interesting and relevant to you, and packaged it up in an amusing and humorous way. This is so much better than trying to force feed potential customers with your (boring) company history, which probably has absolutely no bearing on why they should buy a product.

You can judge for yourself by visiting the website here

Almost every day, we speak with businesses that are still not convinced that their traditional, off-line retail outlet or product can benefit from going online.  When we talk with our clients about making the transition to online, their first thoughts jump to e-commerce and setting up an online shop. This can be one option, but what people tend to overlook is the thousands of other things you can do online to promote and sell your products.

One of our favourite examples of using the internet is a creative way is Wine Library. With it’s origins as a traditional wine retailer, the business experienced a major culture shock when its CEO, self-taught wine expert Gary Vaynerchuk, started taping his own reviews of their wine and posting them online. So, did his online show help sales? According to Gary,

“At first, sales decreased substantially. I was the CEO and it was culture shock for this company to lose me. I wasn’t spending 15 hours a day trying to build Wine Library retail. My day used to be calling on CEOs and six figure clients and selling them tens of thousands of dollars of wine every day. That just stopped on a dime. But it’s climbed back up. That’s the kind of business you love, right? It doesn’t rely on you at all and is still growing.

Almost 70 percent of the wines that have been on Wine Library I’ve panned. At first, I knew people would think I was just shilling wine. But what they didn’t realize I had a much bigger global thought: I was trying to build personal brand equity. There are people driving four, five or six hours just to see where I tape the show and coming to Wine Library”

He now he does five shows a week, attracts 80,000 people a day to his website and has sales in excess of $50 million.

Looking for a little inspiration for your next website project? Each week we showcase a new website that pushes the bounds in terms of creativity, design and development.

Click here to check out the site