An emotional new Ikea spot will move you to tears. It’ll also have you laughing at yourself for crying over the fate of a lamp.
Created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB), Miami, and directed by Spike Jonze of bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ), the : 60 "Lamp"—airing on TV and playing in movie theaters—opens in an apartment with a young woman unplugging an old red lamp that sits on an end table next to her couch. As a simple, melancholic piano track begins, she walks out of the room and down the hallway carrying the lamp. We see the journey toward the front door from the lamp’s perspective as it "looks" over her shoulder into the living room.
The woman continues onward, leaving her apartment, stepping out the front door of her building and walking down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.
It’s a cold, damp, dreary day. Leaves are blowing down the street, and it appears to be fall. Eager to return to the comfort of her home, the woman places the lamp and a bag of trash on the curb. We get another glimpse of her from the lamp’s perspective as she jogs back up the steps of the building.
Night falls, and so does a hard rain. Sitting next to a trashcan, the poor lamp is pummeled with rain. From the lamp’s point of view, we look up and get a peek inside the living room window of the woman’s apartment: She is adjusting her sleek new silver lamp, the one that now occupies the spot on the end table where the discarded lamp once sat.
Then, from inside the warm, cozy apartment, we see the red lamp again, sitting alone on the street. Just when you think this spot can’t possibly tug at the heartstrings anymore, the woman turns off her new lamp, stroking it with admiration: This gesture is observed by the old lamp.
Back on the street, we see the old lamp, alone in the dark. Legs walk into frame. The camera pans up to show us a bespectacled gentleman in a brown coat. "Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you [are] crazy. It has no feelings," he scolds with a Swedish accent. "And the new one is much better."
Cut to a white screen bearing the Ikea logo and the word unböring.
CPB’s Ari Merkin, a group creative director at the agency—although not the group creative director on the Ikea account—who served as copywriter on "Lamp," admitted that he himself has gotten nostalgic over inanimate objects like so many of us have. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Merkin and his wife put an old couch out on the street. "My wife was the one who pointed out that we were upset," he said. "She looked at it and said, ‘There are a lot of memories attached to that couch.’ And I said, ‘You’re right.’"
The Ikea ad plays off our attachment to furniture and aims to change that. "The idea grew out of this notion that we find it difficult to get rid of things that have been around the house for awhile. We think furniture is supposed to last forever, and what we’re suggesting at Ikea is that you’ve got your priorities a little screwy," Merkin explained, noting Ikea makes it possible to buy new furniture and experiment with new styles every few years because it offers consumers affordable products.
Jonze immediately got the concept behind "Lamp," according to Merkin. "He had some nice things to say about the spot right off the bat. He really felt it was tight, and we were really glad to hear that. That meant a lot coming from him. Then, he proceeded to figure out ways to maximize the idea, make you feel even more sympathy for this lamp."
Of course, finding the right lamp for the role of the old lamp was of the utmost importance. Merkin said the agency and Jonze considered several lamps before settling on the red, desk-style lamp chosen for the spot. "This one stood out as the most pathetic," Merkin said, guessing the lamp was probably made in the 1980s. "It was the kind of thing you’d have in your dorm room. I actually think I did have a lamp like this in my dorm room at school."
Equally crucial was casting the man whose comments about the lamp snap us all back into reality. Merkin said the goal was to find someone quirky and authoritative with a Swedish accent. Non-actor—but native Swede—Jonas Forlander was selected. Laura Ellis plays the woman who relegated the lamp to the curb.
With the key players in place, the spot was shot at the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood in one 14-hour day by Jonze, DP Rodrigo Prieto and the rest of the crew. The shoot was wrapped after one long day as opposed to two because Jonze went into the project with a "very clear idea of what it was we were going to shoot," Merkin said.
The lamp needed little direction, of course. So in terms of performance, the focus was on Forlander, who had a pivotal role in the commercial. He had been cast for his unrehearsed quality, and the goal was to keep Forlander natural on the set. "To keep him from becoming an actor, we didn’t give him a script. We just said, ‘Show up on the day of the shoot.’ We had him read from cue cards," Merkin said.
Once the shoot was completed, Eric Zumbrunnen of Spot Welders, Venice, Calif. cut the spot with the help of Jonze. (Incidentally, Zumbrunnen edited Jonze’s film Being John Malkovich as well as the director’s upcoming flick Adaptation.) "The first cut was almost perfect with only minor changes," Merkin praised.
Zumbrunnen’s cut included a sparse piano scratch track. Initially, it had been decided that the spot would not have music. But once the creatives saw the impact it could have on the spot, they opted for music, hiring Ren Klyce of Mit Out Sound/M.O.S., Sausalito, Calif.—who also did the sound design for "Lamp" with Malcolm Fife—to write the score. "I think all of us in our hearts knew we were going to end up with music," Merkin reflected. "But approaching it without that crutch in a way probably led us to think a little deeper about how to make people feel for the lamp [through the shots]."
When it came to scoring "Lamp," Klyce said he chose to go with a simple piano performance with string, cello and bass samples throughout. The track starts slowly, conveying what feels like "a death march. It’s over. Then, it builds from there," Klyce said, noting, "The funniest part about working on it was that even though it’s a funny spot, I had to completely get into it from a very serious emotional level and not treat it like a gag or a joke. I had to become very connected with that silly little lamp."
By the way, there was a happy ending to this project for the old lamp. It has found a new home—in Merkin’s office at CPB. "What’s funny is that somebody—and I won’t say who—took the lamp from the shoot, somebody who wasn’t from Crispin. We had to write him letters telling him to send the lamp back," Merkin recalled, laughing. "And he wrote back telling us, ‘See, you’ve fallen for it. See, you’ve grown attached to it, and you are crazy.’"
