Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve no doubt seen the surprisingly touching commercial from Swedish superstore IKEA, where they released 100 cats into one of their stores after hours. Just in case you haven’t seen it (or if you want to enjoy it again) here’s a video:
What I find even more interesting than the commercial itself, is IKEA’s idea and planning for the commercial. Turns out, they didn’t use any trained kitties in their commercial and they, admittedly, didn’t have a clue how their “experiment” would turn out! They simply released 100 house cats into their Wimbley, UK flagship store and documented what happened.
In their behind-the-scenes footage, one of the men behind the commercial explained how the commercial came to be:
“Let’s do an experiment. Let’s take a hundred cats, release them in IKEA. Actually do it, for real, at night when the store is closed and let’s see what happens,” he continued, “They might do nothing, they might run and hide under shelves, they might have one massive fight…”
At one point, they did lose a cat behind a partition and actually had to cut a hole in the wall to get him out. But, for the most part, the cats were playful, curious, and seemed to really enjoy roaming free in the store.
The result was a commercial that was beautiful, heartwarming, and shows us that the folks at IKEA do consider cats to be part of the family.
Check out more from behind the scenes at IKEA’s iconic commercial shoot:
You can see more of the cats from IKEA, visit their official Facebook page by clicking here.
