As anyone who's expecting knows all too well, baby gear and furniture can be pretty pricey. But if you have your eye on a crib at IKEA, all you have to do is take a pregnancy test to get a sweet discount … a pregnancy test that's actually built into the IKEA ad. Yes, really.
The eyebrow-raising ad, which will run in Swedish women's publication Amelia magazine, uses the same technology as over-the-counter pregnancy tests you buy at the drugstore. In other words, you dropper a little bit of your urine on the strip and if the test result is positive, the ad reveals a discounted price on a crib.
AdWeek reports that Akestam Holst, the agency that created the ad, worked with Mercene Labs on the tech involved in the Swedish advertisement.
"In order to make the interactive functions of this ad work in reality, we had to make several technical advancements," the agency told AdWeek. "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. For scaling up of this technique and adopting it to the physical format of a printed ad, Mercene Labs has used their experience in development of surface active materials for microfluidics and medical diagnostics. 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."
Here's a video that illustrates how it works, because seriously, you may just need to see this futuristic amazingness to believe it.
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IKEA – Pee Ad from Ourwork on Vimeo.
Pregnancy super-powers can activate coupon codes! Too awesome.
