IKEA Highlights How Online Life Can Disconnect Us

McCann Spain is behind a new IKEA Christmas campaign asking us to examine our behaviour towards - and knowledge of - our familes over this festive period.

Using the slogan #DisconnectToConnect, IKEA is hoping for a different Christmas, encouraging us to disconnect our mobile devices and forgo social media in order to connect with those with whom we are going to spend time over Christmas.

Created by McCann and MRM/McCann Spain, the campaign starts with the idea that we spend an increasing amount of time with our faces buried in our mobile phones, and this excessive attention we pay to them means, in many cases, we disconnect from the loved ones we have around us.

The Swedish company’s new campaign highlights the social reality of digital hyper-connection through an ad, directed by Harry Madrid's Dionisio Naranjo, in which several real families take part in a quiz where they are challenged to answer questions about elements of online life, as well as questions about members of their own family, over Christmas dinner. If they answer correctly, they can continue eating, but if they give a wrong answer, they have to leave the table.

Gradually the table starts to empty because the majority of the diners might know a lot about the lives of celebrities and online life, but know very little about the lives of their loved ones.

And it's not just an empty gesture, as IKEA has pledged to disconnect too, and for the first time ever, the company will cease its digital communication and social media activity from December 24 2018 to January 1 2019.