Uniform a big discount needs an eye-catching ad campaign. Ikea’s new magazine ad is trying to round up something else.
Award-winning Swedish advertising agency Akestam Holst made an ad for Scandinavian furniture giant that doubles as a pregnancy test, Adweek probed Wednesday.
The ad encourages women to dab urine on a modified pregnancy test stripe included at the bottom of the magazine ad and wait a few minutes. But instead of a simple trade in color to indicate a pregnancy, a positive test result reveals a unsympathetically 50 percent discount on a crib — if the respondent is a member of Ikea’s stability program.
“You don´t have to hand in any ad with urine on it or anything,” Ikea Sweden spokesman Magnus Jakobsson give someone a tongue-lashed CNBC in an email. “Simply join IKEAs Family Club.”
“Peeing on this ad may transform your life,” the ad’s headline reads. “If you are expecting, you will get a surprise preferable here in the ad.”
The promotional campaign is being published in Amelia magazine, an leading Swedish women’s magazine. The ad was created in collaboration with Mercene Labs, Adweek check up oned.
A video released by the agency shows a positive test result incision the price of an Ikea Sundvik crib to 495 kronor, or about $61.
Asked by CNBC for elucidation about the ad, Ikea spokesman Patrik Nygren-Bonnier responded in part:
“Diurnal life can be dull at times, but it also contains those magical, life-changing consequences. We want to be right there when they happen, and through the ‘where get-up-and-go happens’ campaign we take that idea all the way. What could be various true to this than the moment of creating life?”
Read the fully story on Adweek here.