• by Les Luchter , January 6, 2025

Saquon Barkley, just 101 yards short of the all-time NFL regular-season rushing record, didn’t play for the Philadelphia Eagles in yesterday’s season-ending, yet playoff-meaningless, victory against his former team, the last-place New York Giants.

Besides celebrating the win as the Eagles now get set to play the Green Bay Packers in next Sunday’s playoff opener, fans at yesterday’s home game could also chuckle at a billboard placed outside the stadium by Unisom, the sleep aid brand from Opella, formerly Sanofi Consumer Healthcare.

“Put offseason regrets to bed,” the billboard suggested, a clear dig at Giants owner John Mara who infamously said during HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series last summer that he would “have a tough time sleeping” if Barkley was to sign with the Eagles.

While Mara did not attend yesterday’s game, Unisom was also set to fly a banner over the field reading “Gigantic mistake keeping you up? Try Unisom,” but needed to scrap that plan due to weather conditions. Disgruntled Giants fans had flown their own banners over the team’s MetLife Stadium last month, with lines like “Mr. Mara enough -- We won’t stop until you fire everyone.”

For Unisom, Sunday was planned as the exclamation point of a partnership with Barkley himself, which consisted of an Instagram post and three Instagram stories that began last Wednesday night. The superstar has 2.8 million followers.

“I’ve got no problem resting up, but for those of you who might have a tough time sleeping, try Unisom,” Barkley said in the Instagram post.

Having already become only the ninth NFL player ever to rush for 2,000 yards in a season, Barkley recited a lullaby in one of his Instagram Stories: “Rockabye baby, awake in your bed. As the thought of 2,000 swirls in your head.”

In another Instagram Story, Barkley suggested that viewers count sheep, as the screen showed a lamb with Barkley’s head jumping over posts

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For Unisom, the Barkley tie-in -- the 17-year-old brand’s first ever with an athlete --  marks the continuation of a new marketing emphasis on “breaking into culture,” Opella North America CMO Claudine Patel tells Marketing Daily. Last year, for example, Unisom teamed with fashion designer Christian Siriano on a tie-that played off the Met Gala’s “Sleeping Beauty” theme by having models in sleepwear-appropriate attire assume sleeping poses at several Big Apple venues.

Patel says this is part of an overall Opella push to “break away from the traditional mode” of CPG marketing, whether by not having “people running in pollen fields when we’re talking about allergy” (for an example, see “Wise Owl: Xyzal 's Nigel Takes On Mascot Duties”)or, in the case of sleep aids, not showing people with “sleeping with pills by their bedside.”

Calling the latest Unisom campaign a “tongue in-cheek” way of “inserting our brand in the conversation,” Patel says the brand is taking “a fun and playful approach to fan sleeplessness” by “capitalizing on cultural moments where we can be part of the conversation.”

And, while the latest postings and out-of-home elements may have ended, Patel expects the effort to continue paying off as fans keep sharing both the Instagram content and media pickups of the story.

Unisom’s Saquon Barkley campaign was developed by Lippe Taylor, with The Martin Agency handling creative.