Revitalizing Brand Appeal: A Millennial-Friendly Animated Campaign for The Original Mattress Factory”
Introduction:
The Original Mattress Factory is a regionally based direct-to-consumer manufacturer of mattresses and box springs that has been in operation for 30 years. They are consistently ranked high in customer satisfaction but have struggled with growth in new markets compared to competitors.
The Original Mattress Factory has a high repeat and referral aspect to its business but as its original consumers are aging and exiting the market they needed new solutions to capture at the time was the new largest buying class of consumer. The Millennial generation which was getting married, having children, and buying homes was an important market that The Original Mattress Factory needed to capture for continued growth and success. At the time the new bed-in-a-box industry was emerging and growing rapidly selling convenience at a cost to these emerging consumers.
Many Millennials enjoy watching programs with their children and so we wanted to create a project that would be engaging to those children and their parents. Animation continues to be a popular medium for those generations to connect.
Background:
In meeting with our animator and discussing styles to draw from we were inspired by the idea to work on something that would be catchy and appealing for the next generation as well as nostalgic for their parents. The Beetlejuice cartoon series from 1989-1991 offered a style that was still currently engaging with the continued success of The Nightmare Before Christmas we felt it was an appropriate style for the concept of “beds so comfortable monsters would want to sleep on top of them”
Because The Original Mattress Factory does not rely on sales to bring customers into their retail locations we wanted to highlight the value of the product and showcase the real benefits customers would get Comfort, Support, Durability, and Price. It is the classic value proposition introduced to the next generation.
Advertisement Content:
Reaching more into the nostalgia of the Millennial generation we opted for a central narration of a poem much like Animaniacs “Nighty-Night Toons” a parody of Goodnight Moon. Also with the belief that it would make the benefits of the product easier to remember for both parent and child.
The segments of the ad are broken up into different features and benefits of the product showcasing the durability and support of the innerspring, the comfort of foam padding in the mattress and the durability of a real working box spring were all chosen as features and benefits to showcase.
We styled some of the action based on Looney Tunes, bringing similar physical comedy to the advertisement to engage viewers beyond the poem.
Production Process:
For several weeks, we worked closely with the animator to develop a script, music, voice-over, character development, and design Before we went to animatics we went through several revisions of the script to make sure we were in love with the language used to describe features and benefits and that it flowed well enough to keep audiences engaged from start to finish. All while staying within budget and delivering a final product ahead of schedule.
Conclusion:
We hit every key point we wanted to achieve with this campaign, gearing the animation style, voice, and action toward both the millennial generation and their children. We were able to deliver a final product and variations that could be played in multiple formats and could tie into other in-store campaigns. We did all of this with a limited budget and time to do so. The collaboration of working with the artists was incredibly important and making sure we had meetings at every stage to discuss direction and changes helped us achieve all of our goals.
