The mattress category has changed dramatically over the past decade. What used to be a tactile, in-person experience dominated by a handful of brands (including IKEA) is now one where the norm is to buy-before-you-try, with more than 178 direct-to-consumer brands fighting for your dollars. Everywhere you look, there’s an ad for a mattress-in-a-box. To break through in this cluttered landscape, IKEA needed to carve out an ownable way to talk about their mattress range that connected directly with consumers.

Sleep isn’t just big business, it’s also a big issue in today’s society. People overlook the importance of sleep and often prioritize countless distractions at the expense of a good night’s rest. As a result, more than one-third of Canadians sleep less than the recommended seven hours per night. So, the brand decided to remind people of the importance of sleep at the exact time they were avoiding it.

IKEA knew the usual campaign formula wasn’t enough to stand out. Instead, the agency selected channels that would allow them to intercept their audience when and where they were avoiding sleep. After their competitors had gone to sleep between the hours of 10:30PM and 3:30AM, the team got to work. A series of time-triggered digital messages were created, asking consumers why they were still awake. Campaign efforts were focused on an environment that’s known for keeping people awake at night. We’ve all been guilty of falling down a YouTube rabbit hole when we should be going to sleep. So the team partnered with Google to create a series of contextually relevant ads. Each video called out the exact time of night and content being watched, ensuring totally unique messages were customized to each viewer. All kinds of video categories were targeted, such as cats, cooking and football, reaching viewers of Super Bowl LIII and the UEFA Champions League. Viewers were even told exactly how much time remained until IKEA opened, so they could go buy a better mattress. All this was delivered by a familiar Swedish voice that's immediately attributable to IKEA: Jonas, IKEA’s spokesperson for the past 17 years. The messages were also integrated with a national, time-triggered digital out-of-home buy with billboards running throughout the night, calling out the exact time and telling people to go to sleep. This contextual approach augmented the brand’s usual campaign media mix of TV, OOH, radio, social and digital communications.

By addressing the target in the right environment at the right time, the brand created a personalized connection. The campaign received an outpouring of comments, tweets and reaction videos of people shocked and impressed by its simplicity and accuracy. The audience wasn’t merely entertained by this approach, they immediately reacted to the message. After just the first few weeks and an astounding +673% for the keyword “IKEA mattress,” Google praised the campaign, announcing that they’ve “NEVER seen any product interest lift so high, EVER.” Google also reported a strong increase in brand measures with a +108.4% lift in brand interest and top-quartile lift across ad recall and purchase intent, demonstrating best-in-class digital performance. With an incremental spend of $150,000 in addition to regular campaign spend, the team increased sales YOY by 21% over a period of ten weeks.