''Dining Room'' (also known as ''Dining Room Table'') was a television commercial made by the Deutsch Inc. advertising agency for

IKEA IKEA ( , ) is a Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in Sweden that designs and sells , household goods, and various related services. IKEA is owned and operated by a series of not-for-profit an ...

in 1994. It is considered the first television advertisement broadcast in the United States that openly presented a gay couple.

Background

In June 1992, a

Kmart Kmart ( ), formerly legally registered as Kmart Corporation, now operated by Transformco, is a department-store chain and online retailer in the United States and Territories of the United States, its territories. It operates four remaining Kma ...

commercial had been broadcast in the United States—on the occasion of

Father's Day Father's Day is a day set aside for honoring one's father, as well as fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. "Father's Day" complements similar celebrations honoring family members, such as Mother's Day and, in som ...

—in which a romantic relationship between two men was suggested. However, the company denied such a situation and pointed out that said characters had already appeared in previous commercials with their respective wives. In the commercial, two men were shown buying a

chainsaw A chainsaw (or chain saw) is a portable handheld power saw, power saw that cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain driven along a guide bar. Modern chainsaws are typically gasoline or electric and are used in activities such as t ...

, one of them taking the other by the shoulder as they walked away from the camera shot. The first television commercial to explicitly show same-sex couples (both gay and lesbian) was broadcast in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

in 1992 for the insurer AMEV. The following year, an advertisement made by

Lars von Trier Lars von Trier (né Trier; born 30 April 1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter. Beginning in the late-1960s as a child actor working on Danish television series ''Secret Summer'', von Trier's career has spanned more than five decad ...

for the Danish newspaper ''

Politiken ''Politiken'' is a leading Danish daily broadsheet newspaper, published by JP/Politikens Hus in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded in 1884 and played a role in the formation of the Danish Social Liberal Party. Since 1970 it has been indepe ...

'' showed the first gay kiss in a television commercial.

Production

Made by the advertising agency Deutsch Inc. and with Patrick O'Neill as art director, the ad featured two actors (John Sloman—who is also openly gay—and Scott Blakeman) playing respectively Steve and Mitch, a gay couple who had been together for around 3 years, and presented the search in an IKEA store for a new table for the dining room of their house. In addition to the search for the table, the characters talk about how they met and their future plans. The commercial first aired on March 30, 1994, on local television stations in New York City,

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, and Washington D.C. at night, being also planned to be broadcast in Los Angeles. The ad was part of a series of IKEA commercials in which different types of families and their members were presented; some of them featured, for example, a divorced mother and a heterosexual couple with an adopted child.

Reception

IKEA received more than 3,000 phone calls about the commercial, of which 307 contained negative opinions, and the company received free publicity, since

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

, for example, showed the commercial 38 times in its news blocks when covering the reactions to its broadcast. Stuart Elliott, an advertising columnist for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', noted that IKEA's ad sought to get the brand the "Gay Housekeeping Seal of Approval". Scott Sherman, a member of the New York Communications and Advertising Network, noted favorable reviews for the commercial. The broadcast of the IKEA commercial generated protests from conservative and Catholic groups; some of the store's branches on the west coast of the United States had their phone lines inundated by protesters expressing their anger at the announcement. A store in

Hicksville, New York Hicksville is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York, United States. The CDP's population was 43,869 at the time of the 2020 census. History Hamlet namesake Valen ...

, received a bomb threat, which was ruled out after the evacuation of the premises. Despite protests from these groups, IKEA continued its campaign in the weeks that followed, refraining from withdrawing its TV ad.

References

{{reflist

External links

Dining Room commercial
on YouTube IKEA 1990s television commercials American television commercials LGBTQ-related television commercials LGBTQ history in the United States History of gay men in the United States