• by Karl Greenberg , February 9, 2011

Sealy's ad during the Super Bowl could have been a lot more like GoDaddy's, given the message: people do a lot more in bed than just sleep. But remarkably, the company and its agency, the Chicago office of Leo Burnett, managed to get the message across with shots of people during what might have been called -- in a less health-conscious era -- the cigarette moment.

The ad is the first in a raft of new spots that pretty much overturns the paradigm for the mattress category by moving away from the usual cliches: X-ray shots of people's orthopedic anatomy and how it fits with the anatomy of the mattress beneath them; mattresses as Ambien; and mattresses as metaphors for atmospheric phenomena.

The campaign -- which comprises three spots -- takes the tack that beds, kind of like kitchens, have evolved to have a more central role in family life. The second of the three spots, breaking on "American Idol" Tuesday night, shows how a good bed is like a good trampoline: the ad has slow-motion shots of aerial stunts using the Sealy Posturepedic mattresses as springboards.

The third, which will break later, goes from one floor to another of an apartment building, showing how the Posturepedic mattresses are part of their daily life. The tagline is "Whatever you do in bed, Sealy supports it."

Jodi Allen, CMO at the Trinity, N.C.-based company, tells Marketing Daily that the new effort was informed by a series of in-house studies that eschewed focus groups for anthropological and ethnographic work. "We did 12 to 15 studies for this launch. We went into consumers' homes, talked to consumers one on one. That is partly because people are afraid to talk about a lot of these issues in group settings," she says.

Allen adds that the campaign is also meant to relaunch the brand in a segment that is largely driven by a commodity mentality among consumers. "We wanted to connect the brand in an emotional way because there is just so much out there that is all about specifications, padding and coils. Consumers say this makes a brand unapproachable."

The campaign also has a social media component, where people can download a free mobile app. The app, which tethers to iPhone and Android cameras, is a play on the fortune cookie game where one adds "in bed" to the end of a fortune.

The "In BedTagger" puts "In Bed" in photos and can be uploaded to Facebook and Twitter. "Digital is one of the largest focuses for this launch because it lets us interact in a playful way with consumers," says Allen.

She adds that the Super Bowl ad ran only in New York and Boston because Northeast retail chain Sleepy's is the first to get the new mattresses. Sealy also makes the Stearns & Foster and Embody brands.