Ikea offers Swedish women a discount for trying its new ‘pee-based advertising’

Ikea’s newest magazine ad is all wet. Literally.

The ad has a built-in pregnancy test that the Swedish retailers want women to pee on. If they test positive, they get a discount on a crib.

“Peeing on this ad may change your life,” the ad reads.

Yep, especially if you didn’t think you were pregnant before you peed on an Ikea ad.

The advertisement is part of Ikea’s “Where Life Happens” campaign. Ikea and ad agency Akestam Holst worked with Mercene Labs, a Swedish med tech lab, to use technology similar to that used in pregnancy strip tests, according to Ad Age.

“We had to push ourselves to come up with several clever solutions to make the concept of the ad work in reality,” the lab’s Jonas Hansson told Ad Age.

The ad is for Ikea’s Sundvik crib. A woman would pee on the bottom of the page, trying to carefully direct her pee stream into the designated rectangular box and not all over her hand.

If she tests positive, a new, lower price for the crib magically appears underneath where the regular price is printed above.

“This is definitely the coolest pee-based advertising since Animal Planet put urine-scented ads at the bottom of lampposts to attract dogs (whose owners then saw a larger ad at their own eye level promoting a dog award show),” declares Ad Week.

So many questions, though.

Do women want to stick a magazine page between their legs?

Do women want to carry a pee-soaked magazine page into Ikea?

Does it come with a plastic baggie?

And what, a baby bump isn’t enough proof of pregnancy to get that discount?

“Requiring a medical test to get a discount on a product that you would literally only need if the test results are positive is certainly a little out of the ordinary and can be construed as a sexist (which wouldn’t be the first time for Ikea) and potentially alienating move by the retailer,” writes Fortune.

“It also means cashiers in Sweden will need to be ready to collect some pee-covered coupons ...”

The ads currently appears in Amelia magazine, a Swedish women’s magazine.

This story was originally published January 10, 2018 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Ikea offers Swedish women a discount for trying its new ‘pee-based advertising’."