How Do These Awful People Sleep at Night? On Mattress Firm Beds

More than 50 million Americans have chronic sleep disorders, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while as many as 84 million adults routinely miss out on the recommended amount of shut-eye.

But the folks who star in the new Mattress Firm campaign are not among that crowd. In fact, they sleep like the dead, even though they’re objectively terrible people. 

For instance, a grandma character gleefully catfishes her potential dates with a fictional online profile, a traveler doffs his socks on an airplane and a guest commits the ultimate party foul—a grossly unsanitary double dip—without a shred of remorse.

The brand’s message: If we can help these garbage humans catch some z’s, think of what we can do for the rest of you.

Three ads, launching today, center on the rhetorical question, “How do you sleep at night?” It’s an accusation—because of the aforementioned rude, crude and obnoxious behavior—that gets turned into a clever product pitch, with Lionel Richie’s pop classic “All Night Long” as the perfectly timed needle drop.

The work comes from Fallon based on a brief that challenged the agency to jazz up a snore-inducing category where “buying a mattress isn’t often something people dream of,” according to chief creative officer Leslie Shaffer.

Starting with an age-old insult and developing a concept around it felt like a risk worth taking, Shaffer said.

“It’s one of those ideas a creative team brings early, and you all kind of have a chuckle and say, ‘Well, we can’t really do that,’ and move on, but we didn’t let it go this time,” Shaffer told ADWEEK. “I’m always a fan of taking the familiar and twisting it, which gives you a shortcut and a surprise all at once.”

‘A different flavor’

Fallon, which took over lead creative and strategy duties about a year ago after the brand’s micro-stint with R/GA, “sweated the tone of these spots from the beginning through to the very last shot,” Shaffer said.

The result is “a different flavor” compared to previous marketing, according to Sam Bennett, Mattress Firm’s executive vice president of marketing. “But it feels core to who we are—approachable and helpful, serious about what we can offer people, but fun and light about it.”

Challenges included casting the right actors, capturing their deadpan delivery and picking an emotive soundtrack.

“It’s such a balance because it’s a big, simple idea, but no one wanted the execution to be too broad,” Shaffer said. “We wanted them to be dry but still lighthearted and relatable.”

Richie’s toe-tapping anthem, used as the coda, has been sampled in commercials before, most recently in a 2018 Super Bowl spot for TD Ameritrade in which the performer himself appeared. 

Beyond ‘Junk Sleep’

Mattress Firm may be best known for its “Junk Sleep” series starring Liev Schreiber and developed by Droga5. The new effort departs only slightly from the theme of good versus bad sleep because, as Bennett pointed out, competitors in the segment have co-opted that approach over the past few years.

While retaining some of that core message, the new campaign also delves into the brand’s customization, aiming to show that it is not a one-size solution. The characters rattle off a list of the features that help them sleep at night, despite their many waking transgressions.

Mattress Firm, with some 2,400 stores, plans a “robust” push behind the commercials, kicking off the most important selling season on the annual calendar. President’s Day is a key driver for the category, Bennett said, but Memorial Day, July Fourth and Labor Day are the biggest sales events of the year.

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The trio of spots—dubbed “Nana Sleeps Hot,” “Socks Guy” and “Double Dipper”—will get distribution on linear and connected TV, online video, radio, social and digital platforms. The ads will get further exposure via Major League Baseball and Copa América soccer games, with the partners aiming to stoke social chatter.

“It’s got a simple hook you can laugh at, but it’s also a simple hook the internet can wield for us,” Shaffer said. “I hope the campaign takes on a new shape as people play with it.”