The encyclopedia · Marketing & Brand · Marketing decision · 2025
Home Centre told viewers to skip other brands' ads — its furniture was in the next one
Home Centre ran YouTube pre-rolls saying its furniture is in the next ad, turning rivals' productions into its own catalogue for free.
Home Centre (Landmark Group)
The solution
Home Centre is the Middle East's largest home furnishings retailer, with a catalogue of over 14,000 products, but it competes against global players with far bigger budgets. Advertising every item individually would have been enormously expensive, and the brand often lost the awareness battle to bigger rivals.
The agency noticed an accident: because Home Centre's furniture is affordable and widely available, production houses across the region kept using it to dress sets, so the brand's products were already appearing in countless other brands' commercials without payment or credit.
Rather than making new ads, Home Centre ran hyper-targeted YouTube pre-rolls before those commercials, telling viewers its products were in the next ad. Messages such as 'Skip this ad... we're in the next one anyway' and 'This ad may not sell this table. But the next one will' turned competitors' time, budgets and audiences into Home Centre's spotlight.
The campaign delivered a 600% increase in brand visibility, an 800% increase in ad views and over 50 million in reach, alongside a 161% rise in website visits, 65% audience growth and a 73% lift in purchase intent — with roughly eight years of production budget saved by repurposing content that already existed.
Why it worked
- It monetized an accident — unpaid product placement — instead of paying to create content from scratch.
- The pre-roll framing made the surprise part of the message, so viewers enjoyed the hijack rather than resenting it.
- The playful thank-you lines kept the featured brands from feeling robbed, turning potential conflict into goodwill.
- Every rival ad became a proof point of Home Centre's ubiquity, which no conventional media buy could match.
What can be applied
Look for value you already own before buying more. A brand can turn someone else's paid media into its own showcase by pointing at what is already there, for almost nothing.
Aftermath
The campaign generated more than 100 pieces of media coverage and an estimated $25 million in stolen production value for the brand, achieving its targets on visibility, behaviour change and brand health with almost no production cost. 'There We Are' was named a Finalist in Creative Strategy: Use of Media at the 2025 LIA Awards, and its results were credited to Publicis Middle East with media by Digitas Dubai.
Sources
- Finalist — Creative Strategy, Use of Media: Home Centre 'There We Are'
- Publicis Middle East's 'There We Are' campaign for Home Centre hijacks other brands' ads
- Publicis Middle East: Home Centre turns other brands' ads into its own
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