ICA isn’t just a grocery chain in Sweden – it’s a cultural fixture. For more than twenty years, the ICA “store” has been on air, earning a Guinness World Record as the longest-running ad series. But times had changed, and the audience had moved on. Audiences were scrolling through fast, mobile-first feeds while the ICA concept remained rooted in a TV.
Client
Year
KING, the creative agency behind the platform, asked: How do we take one of the world’s strongest advertising ideas into digital, without losing what people love about it? That’s where we came in. As an agency born digital and raised on social, our job was to protect the core idea, redesign the storytelling for platform behavior, and prove it could perform at scale on Meta and YouTube.
THE CHALLENGE
Turn an iconic brand platform into a scalable digital engine
Translate the ICA concept into platform-native creative for Meta and YouTube.
Keep the characters, humor, and tone intact. No “digital remix” that breaks the brand.
Build a performance setup that could justify increased investment, not just deliver views.
THE TASK
Create awareness, consideration, and curiosity.
We needed a bold concept that could cut through B2B fatigue, build emotional resonance, and make business owners understand the role of music.
Our goal was to reach people emotionally, and convert them rationally. That meant making more people aware of Soundtrack, and aware of how deeply music connects to real business outcomes.
THE STRATEGY
Keep the ICA world, change the pacing:
The store, the characters, and the tone were all non-negotiable. Where we innovated was in how quickly we set up the situation, delivered the joke, and landed the message.
Design for how people actually watch:
We adapt to platform trends and behaviors with quick, impactful storytelling. In skippable formats like YouTube, you earn every extra second, so every moment has to work harder.
Look and feel: From film studio to the feed
Visually, we stay closer to the feed than to the film studio. Slightly less polished, more real. Pacing, framing, and textures that feel native to social, in line with what people watch and create themselves. That way, ICA’s world doesn’t just appear on the platforms; it belongs there.
THE RESULT
Proving a record-breaking TV idea can win in a thumb-driven world
The task was clear: take a Guinness World Record–winning TV concept into mobile-first platforms without losing what people love about it and prove it could perform. Together with KING, we:
- Proved that ICA’s beloved store concept could hold attention and drive action on Meta and YouTube. Not just as a nostalgic TV format, but as a truly platform-native creative.
- Delivered strong engagement and completion rates across key placements, validating that the concept works in fast, mobile-first environments where people scroll, skip, and swipe.
- Built a creative foundation for social channels that allowed ICA to scale digital investment.
Key takeaways
Above all, we showed ICA didn’t have to choose between brand and performance.
The same idea that built long-term brand equity on TV now delivers measurable, scalable impact on digital.
Strong ideas still win. The rest is about understanding the context they live in.
From iconic brand platform to scalable digital engine
Focus fuels velocity.
A clearly defined growth target and shared north star enabled fast, aligned execution—without sacrificing precision.
Efficiency starts with audience quality.
By shifting to high-value segments and deeper-funnel events, we unlocked better conversion and smarter spend.
Small shifts, big scale.
UGC creative and geo expansion weren’t flashy plays—but they drove outsized results through cost efficiency and market reach.
Testing isn’t a tactic. It’s a culture.
Relentless iteration across creative, media, and targeting turned testing into a growth engine that scaled over 300%.