This IKEA Magazine Ad Doubles As A Pregnancy Test

IKEA will give you a discount if you take their magazine “pregnancy test” ad to stores

We’ve seen some bad combinations in our time. First, there were Mango Salsa Lays potato chips. Then there were Swedish Fish-flavored Oreos. Now, we have urine-soaked crib coupons, courtesy of the good people at IKEA.

The ad, which will run in an upcoming issue of the Swedish magazine Amelia, has the headline, “Peeing on this ad may change your life.” Some of you will think, “Hallelujah! You don’t have to ask me twice.” But most of you will probably think, “Yes, I suppose if I were ever at a place in my life where peeing on a magazine seemed like the right thing to do, there would be a lot of changes afoot.” And when you see that there is a pregnancy test at the bottom of the page and that Ikea will give you a huge discount off of one of their cribs if you’re pregnant, then you will think, “…Yeah, still no.”

In this 100% real video about their 100% real ad campaign, IKEA tries to sell you on this “pee on an ad” idea. The video begins with latex gloves and tubes and blue liquid (you know, “science”) overlaid with the following text: “This ad can change your life as you know it. Ikea creates products for your everyday life. For every life situation. This ad is all about that.” A pregnant woman has to pee on the ad to reveal the discount the coupon will provide.

Okay, Elsa. Hold on to your braids and your cocoa for a minute here. You’re asking people to urinate on your ad (which is more than enough all on its own) but you’re not telling them how to actually get the deal, which is going to lead many people to believe that they need to bring it — again, this is a urine-soaked ad we’re talking about– into one of your stores where people are trying to eat their meatballs and enjoy their Arkelstorp desks in peace, and give it to one of your poor cashiers to get a discount on a crib. That’s a hard pass and a C- for lack of detail.

In the video you see a woman gently squeeze some of her urine out of a dropper and onto the ad. That isn’t even remotely how this is going to go down. What’s going to happen is that women are going to be squatting over a copy of Amelia in their bathrooms and cursing the name IKEA. Then, these women are going to carry their pee-soaked pieces of paper into stores and try to hand them off to a cashier who is not paid anywhere near enough to deal with this kind of nonsense. If you’re lucky, they will wait till the paper has dried. If you’re extra lucky, they’ll put it in some kind of Ziploc bag. But let me tell you something: you are not going to be lucky.

The hilarious people of Twitter shared some of their thoughts on the ad:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/951130546536615937

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/951129513903230976

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/950837484811829248

If the discount is as large as it appears to be in the video, then that’s about 50% off, and that’s huge. Cribs are expensive. But I get self-conscious carrying a urine sample from the bathroom at my doctor’s office — I cannot imagine carrying a piece of paper I peed on into an IKEA and offering it to a stranger. Of course, there will be women who will take Ikea up on this, but my God, who wants that? It’s like offering a discount on Dramamine in exchange for a bag of vomit.

On the plus side, however, giving this ad to your partner could be an ingenious way to share the news of an unexpected pregnancy. “Well, honey, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news….”

In the meantime, we will be fascinated to learn how this all plays out. Fas-cin-a-ted.