Every parent has a version of the same memory. A baby gripping the edge of a shelf, a table leg, or a step stool, pulling itself upright and taking its first lurching steps sideways before letting go. The furniture in that memory is almost always unremarkable. Al-Futtaim IKEA and INGO Hamburg noticed that it is also very often theirs.
The Observation Behind the Campaign
Supporting First Steps launched in April 2025 across the Middle East, built around one specific developmental behaviour that has generated its own TikTok subcategory: baby cruising. Baby cruising is the phase just before independent walking, when infants use fixed objects as handholds to pull themselves upright and move along surfaces. Sofas, shelves, step stools, side tables. Any stable surface at the right height will do. Given IKEA’s penetration in family households across the region, its products appear in these milestone clips at a frequency that required no manufacturing. The observation was already in the footage.
The campaign film combines professionally shot material with real user-generated content, recognising that more than three-quarters of parents share milestone moments of their children online. The UGC component is not incidental. It is structural, grounding the brand’s claim in footage that parents themselves produced without any brand involvement.
What Was Shot and Why Those Products
Argentinian photographer Ale Burset, who has shot across every campaign in INGO’s IKEA series, produced three still visual motifs alongside the film. The products featured are the BEKVÄM step stool, the LACK side table, the KALLAX shelving unit, and the MAMMUT children’s stool. These are not aspirational showroom pieces. They are the furniture that actually exists in the homes where babies are learning to walk, priced to be in those homes from the beginning.
The compositional decision in each image is consistent. The product occupies the supporting role it plays in real life. The child is the subject. The furniture is the scaffold. That framing carries the brand argument without stating it. IKEA is not the hero of the moment. It is the thing that made the moment possible.
Daniel Fisher, Global Chief Creative Officer at INGO The Agency, described the creative foundation in the most direct terms available: “This campaign taps into a beautifully universal truth. Nearly every parent, everywhere, has witnessed their child pulling themselves up on a piece of furniture to take those first wobbly steps. It’s a moment so small, yet so unforgettable. I still remember both my daughters learning to walk with the help of a LACK table in our living room.”
The Series It Sits Inside
Supporting First Steps is the third in a series of Al-Futtaim IKEA campaigns built by INGO around the same structural logic: find the universal human behaviour that IKEA furniture is quietly present in, and name it. The first was Proudly Second Best, which positioned IKEA as the trusted parental tool rather than the child’s favourite toy. The second was Guilty Pets, which documented the damage household animals inflict on furniture with something approaching celebration. A fourth campaign followed in October 2025, Halloween Essentials, which was built around the universal experience of reaching for a cushion or blanket during a horror film.
Each campaign is photographed by Ale Burset, giving the series a consistent visual register across very different scenarios. Each one asks the same question differently: what are people actually doing with IKEA products when the brand is not looking? The answers, consistently, turn out to be the most relatable things in advertising.
Carla Klumpenaar, GM of Marketing, Communication and Interior Design at IKEA Al-Futtaim, described the campaign’s intent plainly: “With Supporting First Steps, we wanted to celebrate the joy of a baby’s first steps and show how IKEA is present in the everyday moments that matter most.”
The campaign runs across out of home, digital screens, print, and IKEA’s social media channels throughout the Middle East. It does not ask the audience to consider purchasing furniture for a baby. It asks them to remember the furniture that was already there when their baby needed it.
Campaign Name: Supporting First Steps
Agency Name: INGO Hamburg / Photography: Ale Burset
Brand Name: Al-Futtaim IKEA
Location: Middle East (UAE, Egypt, Oman, Qatar; OOH, digital, print, social media)
