Sleep Number Reimagines Comfort – and Evolves Its Brand

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Our Ad Of The Week this week answers a simple question in a charming and fantastic way – what would your life be like if the world around you adapted effortlessly to your needs? It’s the newest campaign from Sleep Number, their first integrated brand campaign in several years launching a new line of mattresses, under the tagline “To a Good Life’s Sleep”. 

The campaign, made with agency Fallon, is a decisive step for the brand into emotionally effective advertising. It takes the features of a Sleep Number bed – its unique design that makes it adapt over time to a customer’s changing sleep needs – and uses them as a springboard to dramatize the brand’s emotional benefits. What if, the 30 second hero ad asks, your world worked like a Sleep Number bed? 

So we see a soft fluffy rug extend itself as our heroine walks on it. We see the stream of water from a hose reroute itself around her, and clothes adjust themselves to suit her. And at the end of the commercial, she’s back in her Sleep Number bed. Total, adaptable, personalized comfort. 

The effectiveness of the ad – and of the shorter spots which focus on individual Sleep Number beds in their collection – lies in how it draws inspiration from everyday life. Its blend of effects with real people gives it a modern feel, grounded in reality even as it taps into whimsy and fantasy.  

The ad imagines a more magical but also more comfortable version of life, and the result is a commercial that easily beats its category norms on long-term Star Rating and short-term Spike Rating. In other words, it has excellent potential both to raise Sleep Number enquiries and sales in the short term and drive brand growth in the long term. 

For a category where purchases are infrequent and large, that longer-term impact is extremely valuable. It’s why Sleep Number has been strategically smart to move away from product features and towards owning the personalized comfort benefit. That’s coming through loud and clear in the results, too. On the Key Associations page of the report a huge 93% of participants picked “Comfortable” unprompted. 

As well as this excellent performance from the hero ad, Sleep Number are launching more product-oriented “Collections” ads, showcasing the range of new mattresses they’re launching. These ads also performed very well, with a strong Spike-Rating indicating sales potential well above the average, rising to exceptional among Sleep Number’s target market. 

Competitive pressure is high in the bed and mattress category, and Sleep Number’s vision for its brand evolution is a bold and clear one. Advertising and creative effectiveness is a central part of that vision, and ads as successful as “To a Good Life’s Sleep” will push it forward.