Ad of the Week: Ikea – Pee Ad

Ikea has long been an out of the box thinker when it comes to their retail marketing. In this instance, they’re taken it one step further with an ad that’s out of the toilet, too. It’s an ad that’s both “wow, I never thought of that” and “ewww!” at the same time. It’s very innovative, doing something nobody (especially in the furniture/home goods sector) has done before. But it’s also something you may say shouldn’t have ever been done.

The ad is a print ad that uses technology they’ve created based on pregnancy testing. Each ad has a strip at the bottom they invite the customer to pee on. If that customer is pregnant, it will reveal an offer that let’s that pregnant customer buy a crib at the employee discount. How many people will actually do this, I don’t know. But I pity the sales person who has to receive the “coupon” for the crib discount.

Ikea – pee ad

So, I applaud the idea of creating an interactive ad that targets a specific customer who is obviously entering into a specific buying cycle. But it still rates an “ewww” grade from me (and most humans).They did get people to talk about it though. What are your thoughts?

If you want to read more about the actual technology put into play, you can find it in Adweek’s article, Ikea wants you to pee on this ad – which has a video showing you how they made the ad tech.

Mike McClure, holding in my feelings until the next stop.