It says a lot when an advertisement is so bad, it’s still being criticized six years later. That’s what happened when an ad from the Netherlands was made by Dutch agency Etcetera for the Predictor pregnancy-test brand. Their mistake is such a big oops, it’s kind of embarrassing even now.
If you look at the photograph, the man and woman seem to be surprised at the result of their pregnancy test–and yet, the woman appears to very pregnant. Perhaps it’s satirical, but it’s not an especially good or convincing joke if it is.
For whatever reason, the ad started going viral again on Twitter, notably after user Alex Romero posted about it. Here are a few of the reactions:
shes shocked about being pregnant? LMAO pic.twitter.com/9N5gmYWnSY
— alex romero (@whosalexander) January 24, 2017
@whosalexander @Lushchicken She thought she had swallowed a watermelon seed.
— HelenFrances (@hepzibah59) January 24, 2017
The ad, which was originally made in 2011, was then posted to Ads of the World–which had a similar reaction. Adweek recently reached out to some of the creatives who worked on the ad–the art director, Chris Sant, responded:
“We didn’t know our ad would go viral after six years! Great!”
So what’s up with the weird image? Sant said it was an “advertising exaggeration”:
“Since Predictor is 99.9 percent accurate, you’d rather depend on the test than your belly.”
Um, OK.
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