Psychology
IKEA effect
We value things more when we have helped to make them, so ads that let people create, choose or take part earn more love and loyalty.
All ads
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2025Vaseline Verified
Builds the campaign on users' own hacks and sends the findings back to the creators who posted them, so people value a brand they helped write.
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Duo the Owl on TikTokDuolingo2021
Duo the Owl on TikTok
Treats its own comment section as the brief, so followers see their comments shape the next video and feel the channel is partly theirs.
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2019Stevenage Challenge
Players stocked their own Stevenage squads with the world's best and posted clips of goals they had scored themselves, and people love showing off what they made.
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2019Swipe Night
Viewers steer the story with their own swipes, and a plot they helped decide means more to them than one they merely watched.
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2015Shot on iPhone ("World Gallery")
Hanging 162 customers' own pictures across more than 10,000 sites made users feel they had made Apple's advertising, and gave every owner a reason to shoot for it.
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2015Holograms for Freedom
Let some 2,000 people send in their own faces, slogans and voices to become the holographic march, so the protest felt like the work of every person in it.
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2013The Pony
Lets viewers re-score the dance in a Pony Mixer and send their own version to friends, and people prize what they helped make, more so when fan versions reached TV.
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2013Melbourne Remote Control Tourist
Lets people online choose where four real tourists go and what they do, and a city you have helped explore feels partly yours.
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2012Daily Twist
Closed 100 days of topical cookies with a hundredth image on a topic fans had suggested and voted for, so followers could see part of the campaign as their own.
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2012The Beauty Inside
Lets fans audition to play Alex and add photos and videos to his timeline, so thousands helped build the story and cared more about how it ended.
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2011Be the Coach
Lets fans pick each club's starting eleven and even a live substitution, and people care far more about a match when the team on the pitch is partly their own choice.
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2010A Hunter Shoots a Bear
Hands the plot to the audience, and watching the hunter act out the very word you typed makes the film feel like your own creation.
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2009Free Doritos
Gave fans the chance to make the brand's Super Bowl ad themselves, and people prize a campaign more when someone like them built it.
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Island caretaker wanted. The best job in the world.Tourism Queensland2009
The Best Job in the World
Every applicant filmed their own pitch for the island, and making that video tied them to the place and to the contest's outcome.
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2007Why So Serious? (The Dark Knight alternate reality game)
Makes fans earn every clue through websites, phone numbers and real-world hunts, so the film they helped uncover feels partly their own.
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2006Elf Yourself
Each of the 11 million elves was made by a visitor from a photo they chose, and people prize, and pass on, the things they had a hand in making.
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ImagineLEGO2005
Imagine (Periscope)
Shows only a LEGO periscope above a flat blue sea and leaves readers to build the submarine in their heads, so the idea they finished felt like their own.
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I Love BeesMicrosoft / Bungie (Halo 2)2004
I Love Bees
The story only moved on when players cracked clues and answered pay phones themselves, so they valued it as something their own effort had assembled.
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Get chicken just the way you like it.Burger King2004
Subservient Chicken
Visitors direct the chicken's every move, so the show feels like their own creation, just as the tagline promises chicken just the way you like it.
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2003ecotonoha
Lets each visitor grow a leaf from their own short message on a shared tree, so people valued a work they had literally helped to build.
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2000The Rant ("I Am Canadian")
Invited fans to write their own rants, and the more than 40,000 Canadians who did had a hand in the campaign and a stake in the brand behind it.
IKEA effect: where it comes from
People who assembled IKEA storage boxes, folded origami or built Lego sets themselves valued them more, and would pay more for them, than for the same things ready-made (Norton, Mochon and Ariely, 2012).
In ads it shows up as co-creation, customisation, user-made content and campaigns that the audience helps to build.