• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, June 5, 2024

Serta Simmons hopes to push its Beautyrest brand into the future. And the mattress company is starting the reawakening by pulling a 30-year-old idea out of the archives.

Working with agency McCann Detroit, it is running a completely reimagined version of a spot called “Bowling Balls,” highlighting Beautyrest's motion separation and individualized support. The cascading balls demonstrate how the mattress's coil technology prevents movement on one part of the mattress from rippling to another. That promises buyers a good night’s sleep, even if their partner tosses and turns all night.

The work also heralds a corporate return to marketing focused entirely on product value propositions, “which we hold as gospel here,” says Tim Oakhill, chief marketing officer of Serta Simmons Bedding. “We are crafting everything we do around relevance, simplicity and consistency. And we need to make sure ads resonate up and down the funnel. The bowling balls prove the value proposition, so we asked McCann to contemporize the demonstration."

That’s especially important in a category people find inherently dull, and when they only go mattress shopping every 10 years.

Oakhill, who spent 13 years at the company starting in the late 1990s, rejoined last year as part of the turnaround team, guiding the mattress company out of bankruptcy. And Serta Simmons is looking for a comeback at a particularly tough time, with industrywide mattress sales slumping 6.8% in 2023 to $9.84 billion, reports the International Sleep Products Association.

Since moving is one of the biggest reasons to buy a new mattress, slow housing sales are the leading cause of the decline. However, Oakhill tells Marketing Daily it hasn’t helped that many brands have lost their way, stepping away from product innovation and messaging that communicates innovation and user benefits. Beautyrest is no exception. “A year ago, this brand was talking about recycled bottles in the mattress,” he says. “It completely got away from its value proposition.”

The spot is part of the new campaign, tagged “People at their best get their Beautyrest,” says Rolf Sannes, senior vice president of Beautyrest, supporting the launch of the newest Beautyrest Black collection. “It's positioned around the idea of luxury coming together with innovation in a brand people can trust.”

Oakhill admits the McCann team wasn’t thrilled when asked to do a remake. But he was sure the concept would resonate with consumers and retail sales associates. That’s crucial, since 80% of consumers say they rely on salespeople to make their mattress decisions

McCann “got it,” he says. “I’m a big fan of David Ogilvy’s insistence that demonstration and comparison are powerful, especially in a low-interest category. The initial bowling ball spot did a phenomenal job of that.”

The original ad, which neither Oakhill nor McCann had anything to do with when it first aired in 1995, was so effective that Oakhill had it remade in 2006.

Oakhill couldn’t be happier with McCann’s new version. “Does it communicate the message about motion separation in six seconds? Yes, it does.”

Tim Galvin, executive vice president and account director at McCann, says the new Beautyrest brand campaign will run across targeted video, display, social, and search.

Oakhill hopes such focused advertising will help sales, particularly by encouraging people to trade up to the Beautyrest brand.

Despite the category slowdown and economic pressures on people, consumers are “always willing to move up $200, almost instantly, when you can help them understand the benefits.”

Serta Simmons is the second-largest mattress company after Tempur Sealy International, but Oakhill says it often leads or is tied to brand awareness. Yet conversion rates are about 50%.

“We’re trying to turn around a battleship,” he says, “and get this company back to its former glory. Each brand needs to be cleaned up, focused and direct.”

Next up? Oakhill is making sure Serta’s famous sheep get an overhaul. “Everyone loves those sheep, and everyone knows them,” he says. “The trouble is, they don’t convey any of the benefits of the mattress.”

To fix that, Oakhill has gone back to the source: Aardman, the studio that created the Serta Sheep, as well as “Chicken Run” and “Wallace & Gromit,” earning three Academy Awards along the way. He’s asked the animators to empower those sheep, give buyers a reason to believe. “We said, 'You’re the birth parents of our sheep. Let’s help them spread their wings a little.’”