Handing out free samples to promote your services is pretty old hat.
But then there's never been a free sample quite like this.
The box itself looks like any other home pregnancy test. There's a cute silhouette of a stork next to a hand holding the tell-tale stick.
But this pregnancy test isn't for women. It's for men.
It's called the ReadyDaddy pregnancy test, and it was distributed on the streets of towns across Israel in May as part of an alternative media campaign for Israeli HMO Clatit, one of the nation's major medical services.
The HMO wanted to promote its pregnancy services among young couples, but it knew that its message would get lost if it reached out to young women, who are already bombarded with pregnancy-related promotions and advertisements.
So it asked its agency, Twisted, to come up with a way to target potential fathers. And thus was born the idea of the ReadyDaddy pregnancy test.
"We thought about women and what they are going through while getting pregnant and trying to get pregnant and realized that men are kind of cut off from most of the action," says Eyal Gan-mor, Twisted's creative director. "So we decided to take the most iconic item, the pregnancy test, and create one for men."
Twisted acquired some 5,000 regular pregnancy tests, tossed the boxes they came in, and put the tests in special boxes they had ordered for the campaign, the ReadyDaddy box.
"The tests were active, and if a men took the test, the result would always come out 'not ready' (unless the man was pregnant)," Gan-mor says.
During two weekends in May, Twisted sent street teams to cities across Israel where they handed out the tests to men ages 22-30.
The agency also sent some tests to bloggers and journalists to help build buzz for the stunt.
The stunt worked because it was such an original idea. When you're dealing with a concept as enduring as pregnancy, there aren't many fresh approaches left. This was certainly one of them.
ReadyDaddy was a bit hit with those who received it. A few men actually took the test, and many more logged on to the associated ReadyDaddy web site, which directed surfers to information about Clatit pregnancy services.
"We got TV coverage, newspaper articles, bloggers wrote about it, and a lot of buzz in forums and on Facebook," Gan-mor says.
