IKEA UAE Turns Ramadan Tradition Into a Story of Togetherness
Togetherness Assembled is a 2023 integrated Ramadan campaign by Al-Futtaim IKEA and IKEA, created by GREY Dubai, that follows a young boy named Sami as he arranges the Iftar table using IKEA home accessories to add a personal touch for each family member in the United Arab Emirates.
Al-Futtaim IKEA launched the campaign in March 2023 across the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. The campaign operates across social media, digital out-of-home placements, traditional out-of-home hoardings, radio, transit advertising, in-store activity, and on-ground activations, making it one of the more channel-diverse Ramadan efforts the franchise has fielded in the Gulf region. At its centre sits a one-minute launch film that captures the Ramadan occasion through the eyes of Sami, a child who waits to break his fast while quietly preparing something meaningful for the people he loves.
The creative proposition reframes one of IKEA's most familiar associations — the act of assembling its products — and redirects it toward assembling moments of togetherness and traditions within the family home. Rather than positioning its household products as functional objects, Al-Futtaim IKEA presents them as the quiet instruments through which family bonds are expressed and reinforced during the holy month. The campaign marks a notable moment of brand continuity: while Al-Futtaim IKEA has pursued emotional Ramadan storytelling in prior years, Togetherness Assembled introduced a new creative expression by placing a child's active participation at the narrative's core, according to reporting by adobomagazine.com. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting competent emotional craft and strong channel integration against a competitive Ramadan advertising landscape.
Al-Futtaim IKEA entered the 2023 Ramadan season with a strategy built around a single reframe: assembling furniture becomes assembling togetherness. The insight is precise. During Ramadan, the Iftar table functions as a social and emotional centrepiece for families across the United Arab Emirates, and the act of preparing that space carries genuine cultural weight. By anchoring its household products to that ritual, Al-Futtaim IKEA moved its brand conversation from utility to meaning without abandoning its core product territory.
The global furniture-stores market reached an estimated US$272.5 billion in 2023, up from US$250.7 billion in 2022, representing growth of approximately 8.7 percent, according to grandresearchstore.com. In the United Arab Emirates specifically, that growth context matters: the Gulf retail environment for home furnishing is competitive, with international players such as Pan Emirates and regional department-store formats competing alongside IKEA for household-product spend during high-traffic seasonal moments like Ramadan. IKEA's structural advantage — its scale, product breadth, and recognisable assembly identity — is precisely what GREY Dubai chose to reinterpret rather than advertise directly.
The decision to tell the story through the perspective of Sami, a young boy who does not ordinarily hold a prominent role in the Ramadan narrative, is a deliberate strategic choice noted by Little Black Book. Children watching family traditions are common in seasonal advertising; children actively shaping those traditions through careful, personalised preparation are far less so. That distinction gives the campaign an emotional specificity that differentiates it from broader competitor communications during the Ramadan period. The campaign's geographic spread across the UAE, Qatar, and Oman reflects Al-Futtaim IKEA's franchise footprint across the Gulf and signals a region-wide ambition rather than a single-market activation, as documented by adsoftheworld.com.
Togetherness Assembled represents GREY Dubai's first campaign for Al-Futtaim IKEA. Pablo Maldonado, Executive Creative Director at GREY Dubai, led the creative development of the campaign, according to reporting by lbbonline.com and adobomagazine.com. The broader creative leadership team included Khaled Ibrahim as creative leader, Habiba Gabriel as creative director, and Måns Tesch as strategic planner, as documented by adsoftheworld.com. On the client side, Carla Klumpenaar served as marketing director. The film was directed by Hadi Siryani, with Rajaa Chami and Rana Gebran producing, and Big Kahuna Films serving as the production house, according to adsoftheworld.com and adobomagazine.com.
The production was completed in a single day. Maldonado described the shoot as hectic, super demanding, and crazy in a good sense, per reporting by adobomagazine.com — a characterisation that speaks to the compression of ambition and logistics that defines many regionally produced Ramadan films. Despite that constraint, the film maintains a measured visual pace. It follows Sami through the family home as he selects and repositions IKEA accessories, building the Iftar table arrangement piece by piece with the deliberate care of someone who understands that each item belongs to a person, not just a setting.
The creative execution balances product presence against emotional storytelling with notable discipline. IKEA home furnishing accessories appear throughout the film as functional props that carry the narrative forward rather than as featured merchandise. The household products are visible and identifiable without the film pausing to present them. That integration keeps the emotional throughline intact and avoids the interruption that product-forward execution often creates in seasonal brand films. The one-minute runtime, released in English with multilingual reach across the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman, reflects a format optimised for both broadcast and digital social distribution, as noted by campaignsoftheworld.com.
Togetherness Assembled generated a documented digital footprint upon launch. The campaign's archived launch film recorded 5,740 views, 20 likes, and zero comments on its archived video page, as documented by Clapboard. These figures represent the publicly available engagement data for the campaign's primary film asset and reflect the performance of a single archived video rather than the campaign's full cross-channel reach across its social, out-of-home, radio, and on-ground activations in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman.
No verified aggregated performance data for the full integrated campaign — including reach, earned media, or retail uplift — is publicly available. What the available evidence does support is an assessment of structural effectiveness. The campaign's channel architecture is broad and appropriate for a Ramadan activation: out-of-home placements and hoardings build ambient awareness during the month, radio extends reach during Suhoor and Iftar listening windows, and in-store and on-ground activations convert that awareness into household-product consideration at the point of purchase. The combination is well-matched to the UAE market's Ramadan media consumption patterns.
The decision to anchor the campaign's emotional logic in a child's perspective is structurally sound. Sami's actions are observable and relatable across age groups, and the personalisation of each family member's Iftar place setting creates multiple points of audience identification within a single narrative. As a debut campaign for GREY Dubai's partnership with Al-Futtaim IKEA, Togetherness Assembled established a creative platform — assembling moments, not just furniture — that carries forward as a durable brand idea for future Ramadan and family-oriented campaigns, according to thecreativesroom.com. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects this balance of strategic clarity and measured executional ambition within a crowded seasonal category.
Togetherness Assembled is a 2023 Ramadan campaign created by GREY Dubai for Al-Futtaim IKEA and IKEA in the United Arab Emirates. It follows a young boy named Sami who prepares the Iftar table using IKEA home accessories, reframing the brand's assembly identity around building moments of family togetherness during the holy month.
GREY Dubai created the Togetherness Assembled campaign. It was the agency's first campaign for Al-Futtaim IKEA. Pablo Maldonado served as Executive Creative Director, with Hadi Siryani directing the launch film and Big Kahuna Films acting as the production house, according to adsoftheworld.com and adobomagazine.com.
The Togetherness Assembled campaign ran across the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. It launched in March 2023 and spanned social media, out-of-home, radio, transit advertising, in-store activity, and on-ground activations, reflecting Al-Futtaim IKEA's Gulf franchise footprint, as documented by adsoftheworld.com and campaignsoftheworld.com.
Sami is the young boy at the centre of the Togetherness Assembled launch film. He waits to break his fast during Ramadan and uses IKEA home furnishing accessories to personalise each family member's place at the Iftar table. His perspective was a deliberate creative choice to give the child an active role, per lbbonline.com.
The Clapboard Score for Togetherness Assembled is 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strategic clarity in reframing IKEA's assembly identity around family traditions, its strong multi-channel integration across the UAE, Qatar, and Oman, and the competitive density of the Ramadan advertising category in 2023.
Al-Futtaim IKEA positioned its household products as instruments of personal expression within the Iftar ritual. Rather than showcasing furniture features, the campaign showed Sami selecting and placing IKEA accessories to reflect each family member's personality. This approach connected home furnishing directly to the act of honouring family bonds during Ramadan.
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