IKEA delivers messy ode to another brand icon: its Frakta bag

IKEA is celebrating 30 years of its Frakta bag, an accidental fashion icon and a genuinely useful brand accessory.

Thirty years on, the Frakta bag remains as iconic as ever, and ‘Belli Organizzati’ by IKEA Italy is a witty ode to the versatile accessory.

The bag is a rare example of a branded object that people continue using decades after purchase. 

So to celebrate its 30th anniversary, IKEA Italy and Ogilvy Italy created 'Belli Organizzati' ('Beautifully Organised'), a campaign exploring the strange afterlife of the oversized blue carrier.

The work examines what happens once the bag reaches homes. 

Shot by Salvatore Matarazzo, the ten-image series documents the various secondary uses consumers have found for Frakta: laundry transporter; sports-bag substitute; storage solution; moving companion; temporary wardrobe.

Research in the bag

The campaign's central insight is that most Frakta bags serve consumers long after an IKEA purchase. 

The campaign wasn't just a creative guess, however. It was based on market research by IKEA Italy into how Italians organise their homes. Its research revealed that 65% of people who own a Frakta bag have given it a secondary job beyond shopping.

Street photographer Salvatore Matarazzo shot the series using his signature high-contrast, harsh-flash photography. By using dynamic, stylised angles, the campaign treats its otherwise underwhelming, cheap, wrinkled bag with the pedigree of a luxury fashion accessory.

Each image features the bag in a messy, lived-in scene (such as serving as a cat bed, a plant vase, or a kid’s makeshift wading pool) complete with custom labels and prices.

The ads feature an amusing twist on the now-familiar IKEA ad tropes: humorously presenting these chaotic customer "hacks" as official products.