This has got to be the weirdest advert yet - but it's also quite genius
Great advertising campaigns don’t usually revolve around toilet-related activities, but you can trust IKEA to be the trendsetters in this uncharted territory.
The genius company’s latest campaign might look like a regular advert, but is in fact part-advert, part-pregnancy test, and can be found in the pages of Swedish magazine Amelia.
Bearing the headline “Peeing on this ad may change your life”, the advert goes on to say “This ad is also a pregnancy test. Pee on the marked area and wait a moment. If you are expecting, you will get a surprise right here in the ad.”
Shoppers are encouraged to pee on the page’s marked area and if they’re pregnant, the page will reveal a heavily discounted price for its Sundvik crib.
The creative advert, which took nearly a year to create, was dreamt up by Swedish agency Åkestam Holst and Mercene Labs, and uses similar technology to those found in pregnancy test kits.
The technology detects the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) to reveal the discount, which is a reduction from 995 krona to 495 krona for the crib.
"The whole ad is a pregnancy test that actually interacts with your potential pregnancy," the advertising agency told Dezeen.
"Instead of a simple line indicating a positive result, IKEA presents you with a better price on a new baby crib if you're pregnant. All in real time, right there in the ad.”
The brains behind the advert told Adweek that there was no need to “bring an ad soaked in urine to Ikea to get the discount”, which is a relief. Instead, the discount is available to all members of the IKEA Family programme.
Unfortunately, if you were planning to save yourself a bit of money on a pregnancy test kit, there are no plans to launch the advert in other countries.