IKEA has tested how comfortable its furniture is by letting out 100 cats to roam around the retailer’s Wembley store, making themselves at home. The new ‘cat’ campaign, designed for the UK market, is launching on TV (60- and 90-second ads) and online this Saturday, September 11, to promote the recent launch of IKEA’s 2011 catalogue.

The push, developed by Mother London is a part of a broader “Happy Inside” campaign. The ads see cats playing with price tags, going here and there around the venue, looking for mice places to sleep on. The Cake studio also created a themed competition on the microsite www.ikea.co.uk/cats, which invites viewers to figure it out what pieces of furniture were chosen by the cats for a chance to win this item. The participants can share their guesses with friends online as it is linked with Facebook.

«The idea behind the work is that cats know better than anything what makes them feel happy inside. They live their lives in pursuit of their own comfort. So we released a hundred cats into the IKEA Wembley store, for real, to see where they went and what furniture made them happy,» commented Feh Tarty, Mother creative director.

«We’re going back to the roots of Ikea and its real company values, but in a modern way, using the creativity of Mother to tap into the UK market,» stated Anna Crona, IKEA director of marketing.