Swedish furniture giant Ikea has place a print ad into its magazine, designed to market its furniture to expectant parents.
When urinated on, the printe advertisment operates as a pregnancy test. If it results in a positive test then a discount on Ikea cribs appears on the page.
Mercene Labs, which created the pregnancy test paper, says it used a pregnancy test strip as a starting point, applying the same technology to detect antibodies that bind to the pregnancy hormone hCG, resulting in a color change. It claims in a statement that: “Technical advancements made during the work with this campaign have the potential to improve medical diagnostics.”
The company’s creative use of print advertising has seen the story being picked up and repeated beyond creative/marketing based publications to mainstream media companies, gaining worthwhile exposure for the brand worldwide.
Currently run in Sweden, the advertisment does not appear in other countries’ publications yet.
