Casper Is Swapping Its Logo to Adorn (Some of) Its Boxes With Its Sleep-First Mission
Terms like 'joy' and 'calm' will replace the brand's name.
Having just celebrated a half-decade in business, Casper is expanding beyond its reputation as the company that upended the mattress industry and putting its muscle behind becoming an end-to-end sleep brand. Right now, that sleep-first mission is right on its packaging.
For a limited time, Casper is removing its brand name and logo from a portion of its well-known striped boxes, replacing it with one of five words the company says evoke how you feel after getting a good night’s rest: humor, clarity, calm, focus and joy.
Jeff Brooks, Casper’s CMO, said the packaging change—created in collaboration with brand agency FIG and executed in-house—is part of a strategy to reinforce the importance of sleep and the positive emotions that come with it. After conversations with its consumers and conducting market research that included asking people what would happen if the company’s mission—which, according to Brooks, is to “awaken the potential of a well-rested world”—came to fruition, it saw those five words popping up continuously.
“We thought there was an amazing opportunity here,” Brooks told Adweek. “The unboxing of a Casper is already a really fun and engaging experience. What if we replaced the word Casper with a handful of the emotional benefits that a great night’s sleep brings you?”
These new logo-free boxes are being released on a limited run (for now), starting with 50,000 select boxes, beginning last month and running throughout the summer. In addition to the mattress, a postcard comes in the box with a note from co-founder and chief strategy officer, Neil Parikh, expanding upon Casper’s belief that “sleep is a superpower,” Brooks said. The hope, according to Brooks, is that the word on the box will bring positive associations.
“It really just starts to help consumers understand that when they’re unboxing a Casper, they’re unboxing a lot more than a great mattress or even a great night’s sleep,” he said. “They’re unboxing a better version of themselves.”
This approach isn’t just shaking up the look of Casper’s boxes, but Casper’s stores as well (now totaling 24 nationwide). The store windows will be covered in an even wider assortment of words, with sleep falling in between each of them: Sleep, try. Sleep, be. Sleep, fun. Sleep, make. Sleep, kiss. Sleep, run.
“It’s this run-on sentence, and sleep is the common theme across all of the things that we do in life and the emotions that we feel, both high and low,” said Brooks.
Similar to the boxes, the company’s message is to get people to associate sleep with Casper.
“Since these windows were installed, people stop in their tracks, they take a look, they read it, they take pictures of it,” said Brooks. “Our store associates are telling us about the conversations they’re having with customers because of the windows [that allows] them to engage them as a broader conversation about sleep versus the traditional mattress experience.”
Another part of Casper’s strategy is the Casper Sleep Channel, which lives on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. It provides snooze-friendly soundtracks for nighttime, like the sounds of a bird chirping as the breeze blows in the background or a soft, lullaby-like melody.
Brooks said Casper, which is inching toward unicorn status after it was valued at $750 million in its last funding round in June 2017, is leaning on innovations like these to drive home its mission of prioritizing sleep and living a well-rested life. The hope is that customers can interact with the brand past just viewing its advertisements on the subway, whether it’s to purchase a product or visit its social media channels.
“A lot of times when brands are doing big moments, they tend to lead with advertising,” said Brooks. “For Casper, it’s been the opposite. Great brands really launch their mission as something that’s evergreen.”
