"Come and see what man can achieve when he really puts his mind to it," reads one black-and-white poster of train tracks leading off into the distance. "If you want to see how man made his mark on the 20th century, now's your chance," says another poster, showing a child's arm tattooed with an inmate number. "Once in a while, someone invents a product that changes people's lives," reads a third poster, which features rows of canisters of the killer gas Zyklon B.

"We were informed that irony was a good way to reach a young audience," explains Ms Suzanne Bardgett, the exhibit's director at the museum. Such ironic quips and black humour are the essence of British advertising, and the museum's campaign isn't the first time British advertisers have used edgy messages about the Holocaust. To promote television programming last year, the History Channel used a billboard-size photo of the Auschwitz gas chambers and the line, "So history is bunk is it?" But the museum's ad campaign has raised many eyebrows here and sets it apart from Holocaust exhibits elsewhere.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1993, has avoided advertising altogether and instead has organised events like Days of Remembrance ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda and a tribute to liberators and survivors of the Holocaust. "It is a subject that should be treated with the utmost dignity," says the museum's spokeswoman.

Likewise, a spokeswoman for the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem says it has never run an advertising campaign, judging the idea "inappropriate." She says Yad Vashem last year attracted more than two million visitors even without the help of ads.

But the Imperial War Museum sank some $25 million into creating its Holocaust exhibit, which opened in June and is permanent, and hired Delaney Lund to make sure it was a success. Like any agency, Delaney Lund studied its product and tried to find a way to sell it. But marketing the Holocaust turned out to be more complicated than selling Ambrosia rice or Triumph bras, two products the agency is used to pushing.

Before launching the ad campaign, the museum consulted Jewish organisations, including Yad Vashem's British chapter, to get guidance on the exhibit and a communications strategy for it. Even so, "we've had about 20 complaints, in the form of phone calls and letters" about the ad campaign, says Ms Bardgett. "Some people miss the point of the irony, saying, 'Surely you are pandering to neo-Nazi types.' " Others, she says, understand the irony but find the approach "a little too clever." The museum has never considered pulling the campaign and thinks the number of complaints are relatively small. But, she adds, "I am unhappy at the thought of upsetting anybody."

The approach, if too flippant for some tastes, is "perhaps right for this particular time and place and culture," says Mr Simon Goulden, chief executive of the Agency for Jewish Education in London. Indeed, according to Ms Bardgett, the exhibit in its first four months has drawn 1,00,000 people, more than she expected.

The museum's ads in movie theatres pull the strongest sucker punch with the viewers' expectations. A camera focuses on what appears to be an Egyptian pyramid. Cheery music plays in the background as a voice says, "Have you ever wondered what man could achieve when he really sets his mind to it?" As the camera pans out from the scene, the narrator continues: "What he could build and plan, how he could inspire others to do things they never dreamed they could do. ... If you've ever wondered what man is truly capable of, now's your chance to find out." The image that fills the screen is the entrance gate to Auschwitz, and the soundtrack carries the voice of Adolf Hitler speaking to a cheering crowd. The spot closes with the line, "The Holocaust Exhibition. You need to know."

Delaney Lund creative directors Mr Gary Betts and Mr Malcolm Green say the sinister tone will strike a chord with a modern audience. The agency wanted to reach a broad audience, including people who wouldn't normally take interest in such an exhibit. "The ultimate job of the advertising was not to sell the Holocaust but to sell the exhibition," says Ms Helen Weisinger, director of new business at Delaney Lund. "This isn't Yad Vashem, which is very much about lighting a candle in memory of someone," she adds. "This is much more historic, less emotional."

It is the dispassionate quality of the exhibit and the ads that makes the whole thing so British, says Mr Carl Nichols, chief executive of Einson Freeman, a US marketing unit of WPP Group PLC. Mr Nichols, an American who worked in Britain for years, notes that British irony often doesn't travel well. The real question, Mr Nichols says, is whether the ads make people go to the museum: "If people go, then that's all that matters."

The Wall Street Journal