On the bounce / The global mattress industry is highly competitive and saturated with newer, mattress-in-a-box entrants such as Caspar, Eve, Purple, and Simba, as well as comparative stalwarts like Silentnight and Ikea. In 2021, we heard from Ikea and its London agency Mother about how the retailer has repositioned itself as a sleep expert to differentiate itself against the bed-in-a-box startups that have stormed the category. ‘The sleep market has grown exponentially in terms of specialist mattresses, sleep tracking tech and I even read an article this morning about pyjamas that are designed to reset your circadian rhythm,’ said Scarlett Spence, strategy director at Mother. ‘The category has truly taken on a life of its own. But because of all these new innovations in sleep, it’s been a greater challenge for Ikea to standout among all this noise.’
Here, 10:PM takes a different approach to differentiation: the creative is at odds with the sleepy, calming, lavender hues of typical mattress advertising, and the copy doesn’t focus on the benefits of a good night’s rest. Instead, this campaign earns attention and encourages people to consider purchasing a new mattress by evoking disgust. And by calling attention to the unknowable amount of filth hiding in mattresses and positioning its microbe-neutralising product as the hygienic alternative, the brand sets up a problem and offers up an instant solution.
Waste not... / With a small budget and a startup mentality, 10:PM opted for a cost-effective, unconventional media channel: illegally dumped mattresses. Discarded mattresses are a common sight in city suburbs (there are even Instagram accounts dedicated to spotting them), and go largely unnoticed by passersby. It might seem ill-advised to align your brand with rubbish, or literally stamp your brand across battered, mysteriously stained mattresses, but by breaking with advertising convention, 10:PM lands its message loud and clear. As outlined in this research published in the Journal of Advertising on the power of media placements on physical objects, creative media advertising can be better at strengthening brand associations than traditional media, outperfoming traditional media when it comes to persuasion. Interestingly, creative media advertising was also found to be especially effective when the physical object chosen to convey the message was a metaphor for the product or brand itself.
Trash talk / Another brand that made the risky call to put waste at the heart of its campaign is Ikea with Trash Collection. Created by Oslo-based creative agency Try, the campaign features a series of Ikea items found on street corners and in junkyards across Norway, to highlight the retailer’s role in creating furniture waste and raise awareness of its in-store furniture repair services. ‘We literally had a picture of heaping piles of garbage and put an Ikea product name and a price in the middle of that stinking trash pile,’ Caroline Riis, senior creative at Try, said of presenting the idea to Ikea. ‘We knew that if we were doing this, we’d have to do it properly. We’d have to do it real and honest. We had to start grimy in order to say, either you buy this [idea], or you don’t. Luckily – and surprisingly – Ikea jumped on it.’ The honesty paid off, with the campaign winning a Gold for Print & Publishing at the 2022 Cannes Lions Festival for Creativity, and becoming Ikea’s most profitable campaign measured in the Norwegian market at the time.
