Ikea Russia spread Swedish vowel-ignorance with their pillow-fort instructions #Stayhome

Ikea, Russia had a clever idea to give our instructions on how to build proper couch forts and tents with Ikea furniture. This is to encourage people to stay home, and have fun doing it. 

So far, I like this idea ... but... Then they ruined it all by giving the sheet teepee and pillow forts regular names but using the Swedish letters åäö as replacements for o and a. 

*facepalm*

Look, I call it Moscow, not MOCKBA because I am fully aware that Cyrillic letters aren't just backwards R's and random B's thrown into words. I would think Russians, of all people, would know better than to think our letters are just rock dots to play with because they "look cool". So, I'm docking this campaign a hundred points for spreading ignorance. Yes, I'm picky, I also hate the poster for "My Big fat Greek wedding" that uses Σ (sigma) instead of "E".

Which makes me wonder, who was this campaign really made for? The assumption that ÅÄÖ are just funky accents is usually made by anglo speakers, and all of these bastardized words are in English. The campaign is spread on social media with the tag #StayHome and has been picked up by a lot of English-speaking tradepress, so is this just award bait as usual? Looks like it. Because if you presented this to the client IKEA, I'm sure someone on the buying team there would inform them that the silly little accented words for each IKEA item are actually Swedish words related to the item, or just Swedish names, or places in Sweden. Småland specifically, as that's where Ikea is from. So when you drink out of the glass "tömma" you have just learned the word for emptying, and when you display something nice in the "begåvning" glass dome, you've just learned the word for "talent". 

Client: Ikea Russia

Anna Fokina, marketing communication manager

Olya Belyaeva, communications leader

Yulia Prygunkova, social media leader

Agency: Instinct

Creative directors: Roman Firainer, Yaroslav Orlov

Creative group heads: Antonina Pirogova, Evgeny Golovan

Creative designer: Elena Kravchenko

Client service director: Marina Vershinina

Group account director: Irina Gornov

I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you about the hilarity that is "Trojan" heavy metal band. They wanted to be cool and use rock dots like Motörhead, so they released an album with their name fancied out as "Tröjan". This also happens to mean "the shirt" in Swedish, so getting a Tröjan t-shirt is now a national sport. True story.