Screwed: Ikea in Spain has a Boaty McBoatface moment
Anyone who has ever bought anything from Ikea can identify with that sinking feeling when you struggle to put together a cupboard or a chair, only to find something is missing.
Customers of the Swedish multinational captured this frustration when they named a street near a new Spanish store Calle Me Falta un Tornillo, or I’m Missing a Screw Street.
Ikea thought up a clever way to make customers identify with their store in Valladolid, in northern Spain, by asking them to dream up a name for a road beside the store. In a Facebook poll in which more than one thousand people voted, some 54 per cent backed the winning entry.
This beat suggestions including There’s No Place Like Home Street or Hug on the Couch Street. For those
who chose the winning entry, Ikea raffled off 10 personalised reproductions of the plaque bearing the name of the winning street.
The odd name soon gained traffic on social media. “Google ‘Ikea Valladolid’ and see what street it’s on, you won’t regret it,” tweeted one user, whose message was retweeted more than 7,200 times. Another user, wrote: “I have made a request from Ikea and looking at the bill, I have gone mad. Do you know it is on a road called I’m Missing a Screw and the street exists?”
This isn’t the first time a public vote on names has raised eyebrows. In 2016, British voters in an online poll chose Boaty McBoatface as the name for a polar explorer vessel. The suggestion, which sent the competition viral, received 124,109 votes – four times more than the nearest rival Poppy-Mai, named after a 16-month-old girl with incurable cancer. In the end, to save official blushes, the boat was named after Sir David Attenborough.
But the Swedes, it seems, don’t embarrass so easily. An Ikea spokesman said: “We wanted to make our arrival here more special, involving its people and making them part of our identity in Valladolid, always with a touch of humour, which defines our style.”
The Ikea street is highly unusual in Spain because it was decided by a private company by its customers, whereas normally local councils make these choices. In this case, the company was able to choose the name of the road because it bought the land on which the road lies.
In 2000, Leganes, near Madrid, became the first place in the world to name a street after the Australian heavy rock band AC/DC when they played in the town. In recent years, left- and ring-wing councils have battled over street names that are associated with General Franco’s dictatorship.