When they’re not playing muse to the likes of Balenciaga designer Demna Gvasalia or creating cute furniture for our furry friends, IKEA is generating ad campaigns that are seriously next-level, like a coupon-slash-pregnancy test that reveals a discount on cribs when a pregnant woman pees on it.
That’s right, the ubiquitous purveyor of affordable Scandinavian design is encouraging customers to urinate on their promotional materials, and people are loving it.
“Peeing on this ad may change your life,” reads text above an image of the brand’s Sundvik crib. Below is an honest-to-goodness pregnancy test, but flattened into a simple strip. Unlike the ones you may have anxiously purchased at the drug store and used clandestinely in a shared bathroom, this one reveals not blue lines, but a new price that appears below the original one. As Fast Company notes, in order to get the discount, you still have to sign up for the brand’s IKEA Family club, which, thankfully, prevents you from having to bring a urine-soaked advertisement to the store.
The ad, which unfortunately is currently only running in a Swedish women’s mag called Amelia, combines a sense of humor with some serious technological advancements. According toSwedish agency Åkestam Holst, which worked with IKEA on the ad, bringing this slightly silly vision to life wasn’t a simple process.
“In order to make the interactive functions of this ad work in reality, we had to make several technical advancements. The pregnancy test strip was used as a starting point, which relies on antibodies that bind to the pregnancy hormone hCG, resulting in a color change,” the firm told AdWeek. “Careful selection of materials, together with a controlled capillary flow have been crucial for the success of this project. Technical advancements made during the work with this campaign have the potential to improve medical diagnostics. ”
While we’re not sure we’d entrust the revelation of such vital information to a page ripped from a magazine, after reading all that, we’d definitely support IKEA disrupting the pregnancy test industry. Perhaps they can partner with the makers of this new, flushable version.
