No, this is not a real photo of an IKEA billboard mocking Australian politician Clive Palmer's election loss
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 23, 2019 at 11:45
- 3 min read
- By AFP Australia
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This tweet that carries the photo was retweeted more than 100 times within an hour on May 21, 2019, after being posted by an account with nearly 40,000 followers.
The image purports to show a yellow billboard with the logo of Swedish furniture company IKEA next to a photo of a chair called “Snille” and text that reads:
“Geez Clive… $60 million and not a single seat? Should’ve come to Ikea.”
Clive refers to billionaire Clive Palmer, who campaigned in the country’s May 18, 2019, election promising to “Make Australia Great”, but failed to win a single parliamentary seat. Here is Palmer’s Twitter account and here is an AFP report on the election results.
Below is a screenshot of the tweet:
Comments on the tweet indicate that some Twitter users believed the image was genuine, or thought it might show a real billboard.
Below are screenshots of such comments, with the users’ identities redacted:
The image does not show a real IKEA billboard; it was in fact created by a graphic designer.
A sign of of Queensland-based company Paradise Outdoor Advertising is visible in the photo.
A keyword search on the company leads to this January 27, 2019, report from The Australian which shows a very similar image with the same Paradise sign and the structure supporting the billboard – except with a different ad.
The billboard, also in yellow, shows a photo of Palmer standing in front of the Australian flag and images of a kangaroo and an emu along with his election slogan.
The photo is credited to Zak Simmonds, a News Corp photographer based in Townsville, Queensland, according to his verified Twitter profile.
Below is an image comparing a screenshot of the misleading post (L) and the original image on The Australian (R):
The doctored image was also posted on Twitter here on May 20, 2019 by Twitter user Adrian Elton, who wrote in the caption: “Something I just threw together.”
Elton, a Melbourne-based graphic designer, told AFP on Twitter that he created the image using the photo from the news report and this photo of a chair on the IKEA website.
The screenshots below show Elton’s conversation with AFP:
Here is a side-by-side comparison between the chair featured on the billboard (L) and the same chair on the IKEA website (R):
Elton also said he added the tagline “Should’ve come to Ikea” himself.
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