IKEA Mocks Apple in Hilarious Ad for Its New Catalog

As Apple prepares to unveil its latest version of the iPhone, furniture giant IKEA Singapore has released an ad poking fun at the company’s over-the-top product launch videos.

The ad promotes IKEA’s 2015 catalog, which was just released in Malaysia, and it implores its viewers to experience the power of “book” technology. This is no normal book, of course. After all, it’s not a digital book, nor an e-book, but a “bookbook.”

The bookbook promises wireless capability, eternal battery life, and tactile touch technology you can actually feel. “The interface is 7.5-by-8 inches but can expand to 15-by-8 inches,” Jorgen Eghammer, the Swedish furniture giant’s chief design guru, voices over as he opens the IKEA catalog.

And that is not all. The bookbook comes with 328 high-definition preloaded pages, none of which have any lag. “Each crystal-clear page loads instantaneously, no matter how fast you scroll,” Eghammer marvels.

The clever commercial debuted on YouTube last Wednesday and in less than a week, it’s been viewed nearly 9 million times. Why has the ad been such a hit on social media?

“It’s funny!” says Jim Sterne, founding president and current chairman of the Digital Analytics Association. “It’s funny in a beautifully produced way. It’s funny in a gentle way. It is the nice kind of humor.”

Sterne, who was reminded of a Norwegian comedy sketch from 2001 that lampooned Medieval tech support, says that while IKEA’s video is satirical, there’s nothing snide, mean-spirited, or explicit about it, which makes it appropriate to share with anyone.

Though the ad is digital and the product is sort of digital — IKEA’s catalog is full of digital renderings, rather than actual photographs of furniture — Sterne likes the pro-paper message.

“It shows up the truism that paper is an incredibly wonderful medium,” he says. “Everyone gets so excited about the next gadget, but don’t forget: this papyrus stuff works pretty well.”