Parachute Dreams Up New Creative with System1’s Testing Solutions
Founded in 2014, Parachute has been home to high-quality bedding and bath for over a decade. Since then, it has expanded from an online DTC brand, with its own retail stores, a presence in leading retailers including Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Target and more and the introduction of new product lines.
As a challenger brand, Parachute’s commitment to advertising has enabled the company to carve out market share and position itself as a premium lifestyle brand. It launched its first brand campaign in 2017 via out-of-home (OOH) and its first TV campaign in 2019, but investment in upper-funnel media was inconsistent due to the ebbs and flows of both the business and macroeconomy. Meanwhile, the category became more crowded and the overall creative work blurred together in a sea of sameness.
Heading into 2026, the Parachute team was committed to a new campaign launch that would both re-diversify its media mix and establish a more distinctive, evocative positioning. Over the years, it has continued its investment in OOH, TV and digital advertising to broaden its customer base and solidify its positioning. Ahead of launch, the team wanted to pressure-test how the bolder work would resonate with consumers.
”It’s one thing to develop creative work in theory, and another thing entirely to get it in front of real people. Keeping the customer at the center of our research was vital, but we wanted to ensure we were getting at how they really felt, not reported speech,” said Samantha Bleier, VP Revenue Growth, Parachute.
First, Parachute leveraged System1’s Test Your Innovation platform to test four concepts consisting of visuals and scripts with a nationally representative audience and a custom audience based on age and household income. Because how people feel is more predictive of their behavior than what they say they will do, Test Your Innovation assesses the emotional response to ideas to predict their commercial potential and gives brands the insight and direction to take the best concepts forward. Ultimately, eliciting a positive emotional response is important for success.
Test Your Innovation assigns an overall Star Rating to each idea, summarizing the in-market potential, measures how quickly an idea is accepted or rejected by audiences and delivers an Emotion-into-Action™ Rating on how each idea makes people feel.
Two of the four ideas secured modest to strong performance among the two audiences, indicating their potential for broad appeal with further refinement. Parachute also opted for System1 Guidance, with experts delivering a thorough report summarizing the test results and how to translate the consumer insights into meaningful pre-production creative direction for the rough cuts.
Parachute’s in house creative team applied the learnings heading into its production, and from there developed three rough cuts designed for creative diversity. Hoping to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, the team
Next, Parachute tested each of the rough cuts with System1’s Test Your Ad platform with the same audiences. System1’s testing predicts the short- and long-term potential of the creative to drive sales and market share growth.
The simplicity of System1’s three core Test Your Ad metrics—Star, Spike and Fluency—helped the Parachute team clearly see how the creatives stacked up against one another and which had the greatest potential for commercial impact. The reports delivered these metrics across both audiences to showcase how the emotional responses differed for the broad audience and the target audience.
Additional input from System1 then enabled Parachute to make additional adjustments. The strongest creative scored 3.7 Stars with the Nat Rep audience and 4.9 Stars with the target audience, indicating strong in-market potential.
The final ad leverages editorial Parachuting motifs as a symbol for next-level comfort. Lead talent interacts with a dreamy interior, and ultimately is rooted in the ‘You’re Home’ creative idea. It depicts a woman sinking into sleep in a beautiful bed fitted with Parachute sheets. As she narrates a soft, calming ode to relaxation, sheets float around and encircle her to emulate the idea of a Parachute. The ad concludes with the ‘Land Softly’ tagline, another nod to the brand name.
The campaign launched in July 2026 across linear TV, streaming CTV, digital channels and OOH.
"As we looked to make a significant investment in upper-funnel media, System1 gave us the confidence to move forward with conviction. Their insights strengthened our creative, helped us maximize the impact of the campaign, and created alignment across key stakeholders. They were a true partner throughout the process, making the work stronger and the decisions easier at every stage."
Samantha Bleier VP Revenue Growth, Parachute
As World leaders in predicting and improving advertising effectiveness, Test Your Ad provides the most accurate/predictive metrics.