IKEA Turkey-Sized Meatball

We've been involved in a lot of weird and wonderful things over the years, and some really big builds, but the Turkey Sized Meatball has been one of the greatest engineering challenges.

Christmas turkeys are hollow and have bones (that have had millions of years of testing) to hold them up, so what seems simple at first isn't - and in the early days we had a lot of collapses. On the other hand, anyone who's ever liquidised a cow will tell you that you can't just pile mince and expect it to stand up.

The load stress on “soft solids” is directly proportional to the size, so the bigger you go the more likely it is to collapse under its own weight. A sphere is the hardest shape, as all its pressure is on one bottom point and it wants to roll off the counter…

We worked for weeks to perfect the recipe for taste and structure, and made the special steel equipment to cook them.

Each batch took several hours to prepare and cook, and everything was a serious balancing act using only natural binding agents.

The final festive centrepieces were 4.5kg and collected from stores along with veggie meatball Christmas trees.

Result

The Turkey-Sized Meatball became IKEA's best-performing social campaign to date, driving a 38% rise in IKEA search volume, more than 12,000 competition entries and over £2.5m in earned media, with coverage from CNN to The Washington Post. Even Channing Tatum asked if it was real. It was!

Press

Credits

Agency: Mother