Start with lived behaviour
The situations come from ordinary commuter pressure: no space, bad timing, bags everywhere, a bottle of water that becomes unexpectedly difficult to drink.
Creative Strategy · Cultural Insight · Social Campaign
IKEA
On The Way Home
A Ramadan social campaign concept built around a small but instantly recognisable truth: iftar does not always happen around a beautiful table. Sometimes it happens on a packed train, a lurching bus, or five seconds after the bus you needed pulls away.
The insight
Ramadan is deeply meaningful. The commute does not care.
The creative starting point was recognition rather than idealisation. Breaking fast is a special moment, but in everyday life it can land in the middle of a packed train, a cold bus stop or an awkward rush hour journey. The campaign turns that friction into something warm, funny and familiar without making Ramadan itself the joke.
Let people recognise themselves
The humour comes from the tiny look to camera that says, “of course this is happening now”, not from exaggerated performance.
Make home a feeling
The brand role is subtle: even in the least comfortable part of the journey, the moment of iftar can still carry familiarity, ritual and belonging.
Creative development
Three tiny commuter disasters. One shared Ramadan truth.
Working alongside Sara Taleghani, I helped develop a set of short film ideas around the same emotional beat: the exact second someone is ready to break fast, everyday public transport makes it unnecessarily difficult.
01
The Bumpy Bus
A woman finally gets her water bottle to her lips as the bus lurches. The water goes everywhere. Her mate watches. Nobody needs to explain the joke.
02
The Packed Train
A single date becomes a logistical challenge as commuters squeeze in, bags and elbows fill the frame, and the lead quietly tries to take one bite.
03
The Bus Stop
A drained commuter is almost home, almost on the bus, and almost dry. The bus leaves without him. The rain completes the scene.
Tone
Comedic, understated, authentic, relatable.
The brief was not asking for comedy performances. It was asking for the kind of humour that already exists in a crowded commute: an awkward pause, a deadpan stare, a shared glance between strangers, the internal calculation of whether there is enough room to take a sip.
Observed rather than performedThe camera behaves like another commuter who happened to notice the moment.
The straighter the performance, the funnier the situationNo heightened reaction is needed when the circumstance is already ridiculous enough.
Ramadan remains sincereThe humour sits in the commute and the timing, never in the act of fasting or breaking fast.
Visual language
Phone adjacent, embedded in the commute, deliberately imperfect.
The shooting approach leans into familiar social behaviour rather than polished advertising grammar. Some moments can feel self shot, others can be observed from across the carriage or through the clutter of public transport. The point is to make the viewer feel inside the situation, not outside watching a commercial being staged.
Sound and edit
The city does most of the production design for you.
Train doors, bus announcements, brakes, traffic, bags, phones and fragments of background conversation keep the films grounded in the pressure of the commute. The edit can then move between perspectives as if these moments are happening across the city at the same time.
Representation
Muslim life in the UK is not one face, one age or one way of practising.
The casting direction explicitly centred real Muslim representation and the diversity of Muslim life in the UK. The work was designed to feel recognisable across backgrounds, professions, personalities and levels of practice, while keeping humour natural and character led.
Actual MuslimsRepresentation was treated as lived experience, not surface styling.
Different walks of lifeThe campaign world is deliberately broader than one cultural shorthand for Muslim identity.
Natural comic instinctCharacters needed warmth, personality and restraint rather than “comedy acting”.
Format
Built for the way social film is actually consumed.
The production material specifies short social and digital films, with the concept deck proposing standalone 10 to 15 second moments that can work independently and then connect into a wider campaign world. Each scenario gets to the tension quickly, lets the human reaction land, and gets out.
Development note: production and casting documents also use the working campaign title “Iftar at Ours”. The creative deck shown here is titled “On The Way Home”.
What I learned
Cultural relevance gets stronger when the observation is specific.
Do not explain the culture to death
A date, a quiet bismillah and a glance at the clock can carry more truth than an exposition heavy Ramadan script.
Specificity creates universality
The details are Muslim and Ramadan specific, but the frustration of a packed commute is instantly legible to almost anyone.
Restraint protects authenticity
The campaign gets warmer when the brand, performances and visual treatment all resist trying too hard to prove that they understand the audience.
Selected deck
From insight to a filmable campaign world.
Final film
Watch the finished IKEA Ramadan film.
The final execution brings the commuter observation into a live social format, keeping the awkwardness, restraint and everyday Ramadan recognition at the centre.
If Instagram blocks playback inside the browser, open the final film on Instagram.