Ikea puts a paper chase in motion

Does this sound boring to you -- or unboring? Ikea is giving away wrapping paper.

While the value-minded might not think there is anything ho-hum about that idea, the marketing department at the home furnishings megastore is twisting the giveaway idea in a subtle (too subtle?) way to underscore its “unboring” ad campaign.

The gift paper is posted on vacant storefronts and sooty walkway walls, sharing space with guerrilla handbills on streets that are miles away from the company’s sunshine yellow-and-blue buildings. If you’re interested, you’ll have to find the paper displays on your own. And do you know why? Because surprises are not boring.

What is boring, we are told in the store’s multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, is holding on to old stuff that doesn’t project our personal style. The average American, says the company with gritted teeth, will have five jobs, four homes, three dogs and fewer than two dining room tables in a lifetime.

Well, dull!

Ikea’s antidote: Your opportunity, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., to encounter one of its displays and take away a sheet (or sheets) of the specially designed paper in one of four styles -- thin vertical stripes in orange, mustard and pink that cause flashbacks to Marcia Brady’s crewneck tops; overlapping pastel circles that look as if you’re seeing the fuzzy-focused end of a kaleidoscope; international flags shaped like people (think “It’s a Small World” without the gnawing music); and a swarm of bug-size red and green human faces.

On the street, Ikea’s displays are arranged in 2-by-3-foot blocks; the tablets of wrapping paper alternate with store ads that have a close-up shot of a product, its price, the company logo and the words “wrap unboring.” Those are the minimalist instructions that marketing whizzes hope communicate the holiday spirit: Give a gift and, since you’re cool enough to decode this, you get something for nothing.

(For a thorough explanation of the campaign, you can read “The Unboring Manifesto.” There are 10 million copies inserted into current issues of design magazines.)

People who passed by the tablets near the Venice boardwalk during lunchtime last week noticed the colorful sheets of paper flapping in the wind. And then they kept on walking.

The question: Did you know these sheets are free for the taking?

The answer: Huh? How would I know that?

After an explanation, one guy in a knit cap shook his head and asked: “What decent, law-abiding citizen would think of ripping off a poster?”

Um. An unboring one who’s read the manifesto?