IKEA that has already presented its 2012 U.S. catalog and launched a new Twitter handle continues to communicate with consumers in a more social way. A few days ago, IKEA announced the official launch of a new community photo-sharing website called ‘Share Space’. It is a social platform for users that can upload photos of their living spaces to easily find and share design inspiration with one another.

For decades, IKEA has been dedicated to helping its consumers all around the globe create chick interiors. But sometimes it also steppes out of ‘the home zone’ and teams up with art representatives to introduce hilarious art exhibitions and projects, rooting in or revolving around furniture design—last year, the brand ‘planted’ a ‘Surrealistika’ tree and launched the ‘Garderob’ initiative, inviting clothing designers to showcase their collection in wardrobe mini-shops. Today, August 18, the internationally renowned Swedish retailer is launching the exhibitIKEA in Toronto—the project is developed in collaboration with leading women’s fashion designer David Dixon, celebrated fashion & design photographer George Whiteside, acclaimed sculptor Bruno Billio and Thrush Holmes, popular artist, painter & owner of Thrush Holmes Empire. The exhibit features a number of vivid and vibrant pieces inspired by the IKEA styles and products.

The Swedish furniture giant IKEA has launched a new promotion in Australia, encouraging the nation to ‘Have a Gö’ and be ready to come out and fight to make all homes well-furnished. The new marketing campaign kicks off with a 60-sec advert, revolving around the theme of epic medieval battles, showcases dozens of people running with chairs and lamp stands to destroy old interiors and bring new spirit to the boring spaces.

Each year in June, the Côte d’Azur becomes the place with an overwhelming concentration of ‘lions’ (not animals, but beastly amazing advertising pieces) thanks to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. This year’s event, which was taking place June 19–25, saw “thought-leaders and experts in all forms of communications and creative thinking come together to inspire, debate and entertain” and revealed the best advertising projects from all around the globe.

Following the ‘green path’ usually implies keeping to just one major regulation: being as good as possible to nature. But since brands should think about profits as well and consider people’s opinion about their eco-friendly products and approaches, as long as everything they do is primarily done for consumers, shoppers’ feedback is one of the major tools shaping the environmental principles of companies. Earlier this month, the ImagePower Global Green Brands Study, the largest in its 5-year history—was presented by Cohn & Wolfe, Esty Environmental Partners and Penn Schoen Berland—the study reveals current consumers’ attitude to green products and shows how it has changed over the past years.

Now, with AR being probably the most powerful advertising tool in the set of ‘reality’ features used for promotion, let’s look back at another, traditional ‘reality’ promotional approach, which still works perfectly. TV commercials with their made-up plots, characters and dialogues can appeal for sure, but genuine emotions of real people are much more convincing. Building on the success of extremely popular reality programs, brands launch their own initiatives of this kind to entertain and educate audience while spreading the word about the goods—some of these projects are grandiose, the others are small-scale, but this format never leaves consumers untouched.