IKEA Appoints Chief Creative Officer

With the ambition of being a positive force in society and at the forefront of life at home, IKEA wants to be in constant movement, creatively exploring what, where and how people's notion of home will be in the next decades. To accelerate this work, IKEA has decided to appoint a Chief Creative Officer for Range and Marketing & Communication.  

IKEA of Sweden AB welcomes Linus Karlsson, one of the advertising industry’s most respected and honored creative executives as Chief Creative Officer from 1 April 2021. His main assignment will be to set the creative direction for IKEA Range and Marketing & Communication. The role also includes to creatively lead and inspire the many co-workers and collaboration partners throughout the IKEA network. 
 
“Creativity sits in the DNA of IKEA, but we constantly need to boost it and feed our imagination to assure that we capture people´s needs and dreams in our future range, in new and diverse ways of communicating and in how we share our offer with the many people. The Chief Creative Officer will play a key role in this,” says Erika Intiso, Marketing and Communication Manager at IKEA of Sweden AB.

“We want to strengthen how we cater for creativity in our daily work with design, product development, marketing and communication. How we take care of creative ideas and turn them into a reality of IKEA products and solutions that can meet the many people. As Chief Creative Officer, Linus Karlsson will be an accelerator, bouncing board and source of inspiration and experience. And we´re really happy to have him in this role,” says Fredrika Inger, Range & Product Development Manager at IKEA of Sweden AB.  
 
Linus Karlsson has worked with IKEA as a consultant in several creative projects on and off since early 2012. His previous engagement and work for IKEA includes being a guest speaker, creative leader, and content partner.

”I´m excited to join IKEA in this role because in its soul, IKEA is a creativity company and my job together with all my colleagues will be to feed it, boost it and make sure it comes out. I see IKEA as a way of thinking and living, with Democratic Design at the core. And that deeply motivates me, because it’s inherently a commitment to social justice,” says Linus Karlsson.

Linus Karlsson Bio:

When were you born? 1968

When did you start working for IKEA? 2021, but I have worked together with IKEA as a consultant on and off since early 2012.

What area do you work in? My work as Chief Creative Officer is a cross assignment where range and marketing and communication comes together. The main task I have is to lead, inspire and set the creative direction and future vision of life at home for IKEA Range and Marketing & Communication.

What topics are within your area of expertise? Creativity and imagination in all its forms and formats. And, no, they are not the same thing.

What do you do? Creativity lives in the DNA of IKEA and in everyone who works here, my job is to be an accelerator and enabler so that all the fantastic ideas, thoughts, knowledge and creativity inside all of us can come out somehow. That’s my job.

Why is this area of work important? We all have so much untapped interesting stuff within us. Few things are worse than a missed or unshared idea, or spending time and money on something without an idea. What’s tricky is that many of the best ideas often come from the most unexpected places. IKEA and Älmhult is proof of that.

What’s your professional background? I have my background in advertising and design, and have worked with brands like Virgin, Diesel, Chevrolet, MTV, BMW, Stella Artois, Mastercard and Nespresso.

How is Democratic Design* important to you? It’s more than a discipline in a design process. It’s about our core values. Here’s why: The world is more economically divided than ever and Democratic Design directly contributes to equality in everyday life between the have and the have nots. So, it’s essentially a social justice commitment.

What product reflects your thoughts about Democratic Design and why? I think the grater is an overlooked, hard-working little genius in the kitchen. Invented almost 500 years ago, to help families to stretch their money when the cheese got too hard to eat. When IKEA removed the red plastic handles on IDEALISK a few years ago, it made it look exactly like the one my grandma used to have and I use it every day

Source : IKEA

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