How IKEA Croatia Stays On-Tren - and Top-of-Mind - with AI-Powered Content from Recommend

As IKEA Croatia built out its digital performance strategy, one challenge kept surfacing: how to consistently produce inspiring, trend-driven content without overwhelming internal teams or compromising quality. Traditional campaign production cycles were too slow. Trends shifted weekly, making it hard to stay relevant across search and social.

Meanwhile, customer expectations had evolved. People weren’t just searching for products - they were looking for ideas. They wanted content that reflected their lifestyle, their season, their moment. That required a more agile and intelligent approach to content creation.

IKEA Croatia partnered with Recommend, an AI-powered content engine built to bring content and commerce together. With Recommend, the brand could automate the discovery of real-time trends and turn those insights into campaign-ready assets at speed.

Unlike basic automation tools, Recommend uses a proprietary trend recognition engine paired with advanced language models to uncover emerging themes in home decor, living spaces, and design culture. The system doesn’t just track what’s trending—it understands why. From there, it generates creative concepts and outlines that align with both IKEA’s brand voice and consumer interests.

The rollout began with a simple pilot: could Recommend generate fresh weekly content ideas that IKEA’s team would feel confident putting live? Within the first month, the answer was clear. The Recommend engine was not only generating high-quality content, but doing so at a pace 4x faster than IKEA’s traditional workflow.

Once validated, the system was integrated into IKEA’s performance marketing cycle, fueling always-on campaigns across Google Ads and paid social. Recommend’s team collaborated closely with IKEA’s content leads, refining prompts, adjusting tone, and ensuring localization for the Croatian market.

The result was a fully automated, yet brand-consistent, content loop - one that continuously pushed new, inspiring material into the market based on what people were actually interested in that week.

At the heart of the solution are a few key capabilities:

• Trend Recognition: Scanning social platforms, search behavior, and cultural data to spot what’s gaining traction in home and lifestyle.
• Content Generation: Turning trend insights into IKEA-style editorial content—ranging from blog-style inspiration to social-first headlines and ad copy.
• Brand Alignment: Each piece is generated with IKEA’s tone, aesthetics, and campaign objectives in mind—ensuring consistency at every touchpoint.
• Weekly Cadence: New content is delivered on a rolling basis, keeping campaigns fresh and tuned to the cultural moment.

Though still early, the partnership has already delivered promising results:

• +35% increase in CTR on trend-driven ad campaigns
• 4x faster content production cycle
• Consistent top-of-funnel engagement with IKEA’s core digital audiences
• Stronger alignment between campaign messaging and consumer interest

Beyond the metrics, the system has freed up IKEA’s internal teams to focus on big-picture strategy while leaving the content rhythm to Recommend’s engine.

For Recommend, this partnership reflects a growing shift in how brands approach content—less about volume, more about cultural timing.

“Our mission is to simplify complexity and empower anyone to create incredible content at scale,” says a Recommend spokesperson. “Working with IKEA shows what’s possible when you combine strong brand vision with real-time insight and automation.”

As the partnership expands, IKEA Croatia is exploring additional formats—visual, video, and even conversational—to bring its content engine closer to how people live, browse, and buy.

Because in the end, inspiration isn’t just about ideas. It’s about showing up at the right time, with something worth clicking.