Some 30% of Americans have insomnia symptoms, according to
scientific evidence cited by the therapy app Rest.
An awful lot of them go online and buy stuff in the wee hours, according to anecdotal evidence again from Rest.
So, to mark Sleep
Awareness Week, the two-year-old Rest was set to launch a stealth campaign some time after midnight March 10, buying up numerous search terms on TikTok Shop and elsewhere on the platform. When
they clicked on the links that came up, users saw live videos from influencers spanning a range of product categories.
“The main objective of this is that misdirect,”
Aldo Quevedo, CEO of the Beautiful Beast agency, tells Marketing Daily. “These guys are known for selling cosmetics or mascaras or foundation. Now they're going to be going deeper. They
will be presenting the root of the problem -- [insomnia] -- and the solution to it.”
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Leibaschoff says the influencers – some 23 in all -- will be giving insomnia sufferers
“real hacks….on how to feel refreshed he next morning….It’s not just makeup, it’s not concealer, it's not super-strong coffee or an energized drink. It’s not
those quick fixes. It’s actually a good night’s sleep. And in order to have a good night’s sleep, they’re going to be sharing the Rest app.”
Due to the nature of
live influencer posting, no videos were available to Marketing Daily in advance, but Flor Leibaschoff, Beautiful Beast co-founder and chief creative officer, said Rest planned to go
“where insomniacs live, trying to shop for different things when they are doom-scrolling.”
Per a press release, the campaign includes spoof videos, such as “the ultimate hack
to have [your] face refreshed without ‘panda eyes.’”
“When we talk about sleep problems, we think of ‘I'm tossing and turning, I'm unable to fall
asleep,” Rest founder-CEO Martin Siniawski explains. “But a big chunk of [them] are struggling with waking up in the middle of the night and unable to fall asleep again.
Unfortunately, the main thing they reach for is their phones.”
The phone often turns into a vehicle for “bad decisions,” Siniawski relates, whether shopping for things they
don't need, messaging people they should avoid, or trying “sleep solutions that are not effective.” With this campaign, he says, Rest wants to “hijack” the phone “in a
more positive way to help people.”
The campaign is called “Late-Night Mistakes,” Leibaschoff says, because research shows that such in-bed activities are ”actually the
worst thing that you can do. When you cannot sleep, you need to get out of the bed and go somewhere else. The bed is supposed to be just for sleeping.”
Before this campaign, Rest has
only done only performance marketing, but Siniawski says it’s time for insomniacs to know that his product is the only sleep app using cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, (CBT-I in its
medical abbreviation).
CBT-I is reportedly successful 80% of the time and recommended by the American Society of Sleep Medicine, Siniawski notes. Rest applies AI to CBT-I in the form of
daily text questionnaires and 10- to 15-minute voice coaching sessions.
Leibaschoff describes the latter as “having your own coach next to you 24/7.” She gives a personal example
of wanting to nap during the day: “The coach was actually telling me, ‘No, you cannot nap right now, you need to hang in there.’”
The campaign adopts a new tag line,
“Start sleeping, get dreaming.” To those with insomnia symptoms, Leibaschoff explains “night can feel eternal. After trying everything and still not sleeping., you feel a little bit
hopeless. And you're looking for something that you can believe again, and you can dream again.”
The campaign will continue throughout March.
There’s also a 50%-off deal on
the first month of service during the campaign, because Rest is a subscription app.
Siniawski compares good sleep habits to exercise. “There’s lots of different habits that need to
be sustained and maintained to prevent backpedaling or going back to where you were before.”
Rest reports 100,000 downloads since its launch.