Here at Agency Creative, we often recognize and draw inspiration from admirable advertising campaigns that go against the grain. Did you know that the average person is exposed to anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 advertising campaign messages per day?
Meet Purple Mattress, a company specializing in the perfect mattress, that broke through the noise by leveraging user-generated content in an advertising campaign that challenged the category norms with an unconventional experiment. In a cluttered and noisy digital environment, it is important to craft messaging and campaigns that authentically engage the customer. Creating customer involvement with a product or service is not an easy task. It requires a stellar product and strategy that causes a customer to want to become a part of the content and contribute to the conversation. User-generated content is one of the most cost-efficient ways to advertise and appeal to a variety of audiences in a timely manner.
The level of disruptiveness within an advertising campaign is directly proportional to the amount of response and engagement. Invite the customer into the conversation. Give them a voice and something to talk about. Make yourself known to future brand advocates through authentic connections and you’ll spark conversation straight from the source that counts most – the audience. Why not break through the clutter and engage your customers with the irresistible challenge of trying the product first hand? That’s exactly what Purple has done seamlessly with their recent “do it yourself” advertising campaign.
Now that you have the what and why, here’s the how.
Purple created the “Raw Egg Test” to position themselves as a leader in the mattress category and invite their customers to validate their claim by attempting to drop raw eggs on their mattress from above.
In the spot, viewers witness firsthand how eggs respond to colliding with various types of mattresses categorized by a playful and spunky narrator. As you can imagine, the too hard and too soft mattresses shattered the eggs upon impact. Conversely, when the egg collided with the Purple mattress, it was impervious to the impact and a zoomed in shot revealed the egg seamlessly forming into the mattress. An egg-cellent fit!
The re-enactment effectively portrayed just how much damage a faulty mattress can do to a consumer. The Purple Mattress was designed with the pressure points of the human body in mind to have the firmness to support your body while maintaining the softness for ultimate comfort. See for yourself how they set up the advertising campaign with this Goldilocks example.
Many brands have clever ads, but not all of them can create a social movement. Purple encouraged viewers of the spot to purchase the mattress and conduct the egg test firsthand. Customers quickly accepted the challenge and were pleasantly surprised to discover that the bed indeed lived up to its advertisement. The idea behind the spot was outlandish enough to turn heads and receive a number of social responses, including videos of customers trying the raw test out for themselves. The benefits of user-generated content are two-fold. Not only did this social movement generate buzz around the Purple brand name and products, but it also validated the brand promise and engendered trust that ultimately establishes brand loyalty.
Purple is just one of the many brands, similar to Uber and AirBnB, that are successfully revolutionizing and reinvigorating their industries through the use of social media, satire-based campaigns, and user-generated content. Through this advertising campaign, Purple has disrupted the usual flow of messaging in the mattress category and delivered a digital alternative for the customer to test the quality of a mattress in-store. User opinion is both valued and remembered by potential customers because it demonstrates a significant level of authenticity. Purple recognized the need to spice things up in the mattress category and exploited the use of user-generated content and social media to provide the audience with a compelling reason to press play. This strategic, forward thinking is exactly what revs our creative engine and fuels our desire to think outside the box.
