Often the best retail ideas are the ones you can explain in about five seconds.

IKEA has launched a new Buyback Service in Saudi Arabia, where instead of IKEA selling to you, you sell to IKEA.

Shopping in reverse.

So, naturally, IKEA reversed everything.

Created by Droga5 London, the new Reverse Shop campaign takes the simple premise of the service and runs with it across pretty much every part of the brand.

Furniture is photographed from behind. Prices and headlines appear backwards. Films run in reverse. Emails are written backwards. Even the music has been reversed.

And then there’s the hot dog.

To tease the campaign, IKEA took one of its most recognisable products and created the DOG HOT, putting the bun inside the sausage.

Ridiculous? Yes.

But also a brilliantly simple way of getting people to notice that something at IKEA is suddenly working the other way around.

And that’s what I really like about this idea.

There’s no complicated sustainability message. No lengthy explanation of circularity. No worthy advertising telling us why buying second-hand furniture is good for the planet.

They’ve simply taken the product truth and turned it into the creative idea.

You sell. IKEA buys. Shopping in reverse.

The idea moves beyond film and clever posters into social, digital, CRM, the app, in-store and even the product experience itself. Influencers have been challenged to do everyday things backwards, while IKEA app users received backwards push notifications.

It’s one simple thought that gives every channel something slightly different to do.

And perhaps that’s the best bit.

In retail, we can have a tendency to keep adding things to an idea until the original thought disappears completely.

This does the opposite.

Find the simplest thing that’s interesting about the offer.

Then make absolutely everything about it.

Kudos Tara Ford and Droga5 London.