SINGAPORE - The new 2018 Ikea catalogue has 328 pages and more than 400 new products featured in its glossy pages. It is a lot to thumb through for most of us, but one woman has memorised the entire book and can pick out almost any detail in it from memory.
Meet Ms Yanjaa Wintersoul, the first human catalogue who has committed the inventory to memory in just one week.
The 23-year-old, who was born in Mongolia and grew up in Stockholm, Mongolia, Kenya and Tokyo, is the face of the Swedish furniture giant's promotional launch for the catalogue in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
Ms Wintersoul, who is the highest-ranked Female Memory World Champion, was roped in for the project after responding to an e-mail from Ikea.
"We did a test run of (some parts of) the old catalogue and realised that 2,000 products might be too little and not as impressive. So we talked about it more and closer to the launch, Ikea asked me to memorise the whole thing and I said sure. So, here we are," says the purple-haired Ms Wintersoul, who was in Singapore yesterday for the launch of the catalogue.
Her ability to remember details with remarkable precision is impressive and beats flipping aimlessly through the lookbook to find a specific item. Not only can she tell you what items are on which page, she helpfully offers suggestions if you are looking for a particular type of furniture.
For example, The Straits Times asked her to recommend a furniture item that comes in the trendy pastel pink shade. Her spot-on suggestion: the Soderhamn three-seater sofa and chaise longue on pages 52 and 53.
This year's Ikea campaign was created by advertising agency BBH Singapore and plays on the theme, Make room for life. It seems like another hit in the making for the company, which was also behind the 2015 viral campaign for Ikea. That year, it spoofed tech giant Apple's mega-thin MacBook laptops by featuring the furniture catalogue as an 8mm "bookbook".
Ikea fans can test Ms Wintersoul's skills in real time. She will take part in a Facebook Live event hosted on Ikea Singapore's Facebook page on Wednesday (Sept 6) at 5 pm.
Correction Note: The number of items has been updated from 6,000 to 4,818, following clarification from Ikea.
