The most recent Labor Day gave me some unexpected downtime during which I found myself on crutches while waiting for the orthopedic office to reopen from the weekend. While sleep retailers were — fingers crossed — bustling with consumers on the hunt for their new mattress, I was bouncing between college football games, a variety of different series and movies.
That’s a lot of screentime, but it gave me the opportunity to scout mattress commercials running throughout the weekend.
Over the past several months, bedding manufacturers and sleep retailers have shared that we’ve fallen back into the promotional nature of the business. Gone are the go-go days delivered by pandemic shutdowns when consumers were gobbling up mattresses and furniture. Now, here we are moving ahead with those key holidays during which consumers have shown a penchant for buying.
The success of those holidays are fueled by commercials, and capturing consumers either online or via other media has become more important in today’s competitive landscape.
I didn’t see a ton of mattress ads, but that could have been a number of reasons: My market isn’t huge; I wasn’t watching the “right” shows; I was channel surfing during the breaks. Sleep Number was there; Tempur-pedic, Mattress Firm and Purple, too. But, it did pique my interest as to where the mattress ads were.
That curiosity sent me for a quick check-in with iSpot.tv, a measurement company that tracks and calculates impressions and attention for ads across a variety of media, including streaming. Here are a few interesting stats on mattress brands and advertising over the past 30 days, prime promotion plowing for Labor Day sales.
Mattress Firm had 10,843 spots and had an airing rank of 41 with a spend rank of 158 compared with all advertisers. The industry’s largest sleep retailer was hyping its “actually really seriously best sale of the year” and bounced between a number of ads with employees floating through the store and offering a number of sales including up to $700 off a Tempur-Pedic.
During the same 30-day period, Purple had 3,732 commercials aired and earned an airing rank of 259 with a spend ranking of 608 when compared with all other advertisers, not just mattress promoters. The company’s Labor Day ad touted cooling, uninterrupted sleep delivered by its gel grid and offered up to $900 off.
Casper Sleep’s 2,128 airings earned the brand an airing rank of 513 with a spend ranking of 606. Casper’s latest spot offered consumers a wake-up call and urged mattress shoppers to query whether they are getting the kind of sleep they deserve and serve up its “obsessively” engineered mattresses to help.
Tempur-Pedic was behind its largest retail customer and acquisition target with 817 airings and an airing rank of 1,034 with a spend ranking of 671 when compared with all other advertisers. One of the company’s ads offered “makes sleep feel cool” with the same discount Mattress Firm was offering: up to $700 off.
Serta, which recently unveiled its latest sheep campaign, earned an airing rank of 1,474 with a spend ranking of 1,154 with its 304 airings. To be fair, Serta didn’t go live with the new campaign until mid-August, cutting it out of much of the Labor Day build-up. A bit earlier out of the gate, and those helpful sheep might have bumped Serta up in the rankings.
What’s your promotion strategy for the rest of 2023? I’d love to hear what’s working for you in your store.