If you've ever wondered what an Ikea kitchen might look like if it were assembled in a frying pan, you're in luck.

A super cutesy new ad from BBH Asia Pacific features the furniture chain's Metod line of modular kitchen fixtures, getting whipped together as if they were ingredients on a cooking show. The ultimate meal? A miniature version of your next cooking station.

The whole concept is an elaborate visual metaphor built around a single pun. "Ikea's Metod system is about having fun creating your brand new kitchen," says Gaston Soto, a senior art director at the agency. "So we cooked one up just to show you how."

An overwrought approach like this is usually a mistake, but the design is shiny, clever and at moments adorable enough that it actually flies. Red cabinets are steaks. Lightbulbs are eggs. By the time the pollyanna hostess tosses in a handful of screws as seasoning, you'll be probably be considering a trip to the hospital. But once she starts washing her "hands," you might just submit to the tyranny of her charm.

There's even a plug for the catalog, or as she likes to call it, "the Ikea cookbook." (Or as literary critic Hellmuth Karasek and an Ikea spokesman likes to call it, in so many words, a sleep aid.)

All of which is to say, as tortured as the spot is, it's also fairly striking. Even if it's not the first miniature kitchen on the scene. And just so long as nobody actually has to eat it.

CREDITS

Client: Ikea (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand)

Agency: BBH Asia Pacific

Executive Creative Director: Scott McClelland

Creative Directors: Tinus Strydom, Maurice Wee

Senior Art Director: Gaston Soto

Senior Copywriter: Omar Sotomayor

Business Director: Bibiana Lee

Account Managers: Jade Cheng, Cheryl Cheong

Project Director: Lesley Chelvan

Head of Planning: James Sowden

Senior Planner: Rebecca Ash

Social Media Strategist: Josie Khng

Executive Producer: Daphne Ng

Producer: Samantha Dalton

Production House: 4 Humans

Director: Javier Laurenco

Director of Photography: Juan Maglione

Producer: Mechi Serrano

Music: Noroeste Música