Developed by Åkestam Holst, a Swedish agency, the website takes a clever SEO-focused approach to promoting some of Ikea’s wares.

As AdWeek’s Angela Natividad explained, the agency looked at common Google search queries in Sweden related to relationship problems. It then selected products that can “solve” them, renamed them with those search queries in mind, and added them to the Retail Therapy site.

For instance:

  • A daybed bearing the name, My Partner Snores.
  • A frying pan called How to Stay Married.
  • A dishwasher that has been named My Girlfriend Won’t Do the Dishes.
  • Champange flutes sold as When Children Leave Home.

All told, there are more than 100 products that have catchy, SEO-friendly names featured on the Retail Therapy website, which has the same look and feel as the Ikea website, and links to the Ikea website, where users can purchase the featured products.

While slightly gimmicky, there just might be something to the concept: Already, some of the pages on the Retail Therapy appear to have reasonably good Google rankings.

For instance, My Partner Snores is on the first page for the search query, you guessed it, “my partner snores.” As is She Doesn’t Want to Cuddle, a mattress wedge, for the “she doesn’t want to cuddle” query.

Will the Retail Therapy website actually drive sales? That remains to be seen, but the campaign is a good reminder to other retailers that in a world where so much product discovery now occurs through search engines, incorporating an SEO perspective into product naming might not be such a crazy idea.

Many retailers, of course, do pay attention to product names, as well as descriptions, but Ikea’s campaign highlights that there may be interesting opportunities for retailers to think about the problems their products solve when developing product names instead of simply describing the product itself, or the solution the product offers.