How Gordon Gustavsson became famous

The Swedish town of Malmö was once famous for being the place where The Cardigans learned about the pop music business. Today, Malmö is famous because of IKEA. Actually, more correctly, it's famous because of Gordon Gustavsson of IKEA.

When the Swedish maker of fast-food furniture decided to open a new store in Malmö, it wanted a new way of reaching people, so it hired an advertising agency called Forsman & Bodenfors. The agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, and then uploaded images of IKEA showrooms to his photo album. The next step was to let the world know that the first person to put his or her name on a product in the photos would get it. Soon, people were asking for more pictures so that they could get a free bed, a free couch, a free table or a free Billy.

"simple but smart," wrote MarkoAlbrecht on the YouTube comments page. "Viral marketing at its best!!!" added sheffieldsix. "very? very smart!!!! :-)" agreed matmo70. Now thousands of Swedes are spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms all around the Facebook universe.