‘It gave everyone a jolt’: Silentnight on fending off the challenge of category disruptors

Silentnight believes the bed-in-a-box disruptors who upended the category over a decade ago helped “energise” the market and pushed the brand to target a new audience and talk about its product line in a whole new way.

The UK mattress company has been around for over 80 years, and in that time has accrued an enviable market share and strong awareness among older consumers aged 55-plus.

The problem, however, according to its director of brand and insights, Jason Mcilvenny, was that Silentnight was too “traditional” and “corporate” in its marketing and needed that “jolt” from challenger brands, such as Emma and Eve Sleep, to wake it from its slumber.

“I never see the bed in the box brands, or the disruptors, as being a negative in our market,” he tells Marketing Week. “It’s been a real positive as it has given everyone a little bit of a jolt to look at the way they market their products and the way they target their audiences.”

He continues: “They did wake people up a little bit in terms of how to target a new generation, especially a younger generation, and get them interested in sleep again.”

Silentnight didn’t just want to copy the trend, though, and hope it would bring customers back to the brand. Instead it focused on what it could do differently to its new competition and set it apart as an expert in sleep.

‘Memorable and catchy’: Dreams swaps Gillian Anderson for talking mattresses to ‘stand out’The bed-in-a-box brands tended to have smaller product lines and pushed an idea that a “medium” mattress would suit all sleepers and is “best for everybody”, he says. But Silentnight knew from its experience in the market that a middle ground solution tends to leave everyone dissatisfied and went about utilising its larger product line to highlight its differences.

“Because we had a broader product range, it gave us a real advantage, as we can target people individually and talk about how it’s not just a ‘one product fits all’ solution for different types of sleepers,” he says, adding that the brand worked with the University of Central Lancashire on a sleep algorithm called ‘Sleep Unique’ which takes your height, weight and hip circumference to recommend the right bed. “What we’re trying to do is fight back against medium suits all,” adds Mcilvenny.

A needed refresh

When he joined the brand in 2018 after a long stint in the home decoration category, Mcilvenny found the brand was doing a lot of white mattresses on grey beds in a white setting, something he says was “very uninteresting”, and so in partnership with the brand’s CMO Ian Lambert, they looked to “modernise the brand” and bring it to a new audience.

“Most people have heard of Silentnight, which gives them a little bit of reassurance about the brand,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is build creative around that which can reinforce that message and ultimately create a bit of interest.”

Working with creative agency Dinosaur, the brand looked to create personality around its product ranges. For example, if you prefer a memory foam mattress, then you are a “sinking snoozer” sleeper. It created personas around its entire range using this method, resulting in “bolder creative” and a more “emphatic” brand presence.

“One of the things we were always guilty of is being a bit apologetic, we’re a big, well-known brand in market but we don’t like to talk about it, and we don’t like to shout about it,” he explains. “We wanted to come away from that and celebrate the fact we’re the biggest and celebrate the fact that people trust us.”

‘Every stage of the funnel’: How influencer ROI is evolvingThe result has been a big increase in brand awareness over the past five years, as well as a “massive increase” in 18- to 34-year-old awareness, which Mcilvenny believes is proof that its creative is “resonating” with people.

Not that the brand wanted to throw away everything that worked for it in the past. He acknowledges that Silentnight didn’t want to “alienate” its older audience, and by keeping brand cues like its Hippo and Duck brand mascots as part of its creative, Silentnight hopes to be relevant to all consumers.

“We’re aware that we’re a mass market brand. We’re a middle-of-the-road brand. We don’t want to do things that are too edgy or go to areas that are too controversial,” says Mcilvenny. “But, at the same time, you can still modernise the look and feel of the brand and look at the use of colour, messaging, imagery to modernise a heritage brand in that way.”

All of this has culminated in the brand’s most recent campaign ‘Sleep Great, Britain’  which Mcilvenny saw as the brand staking its claim to be a British institution in a way that befits a brand that has been around for so many decades.

“We wanted to be a little bit like Weetabix and position ourselves as a well-known British brand that helps the nation a little bit,” he says. “It feels a bit arrogant when you think about it, but we can help more people get a better night’s sleep. It has an impact on the nation. We wanted to try and celebrate that and bring a bit of fun into the campaign.”

It certainly saw some positive results. The campaign – which ran across Sky channels – saw the broadcaster’s highest-ever uplift in attention (+8.9pts) and relevance (+16.2pts) scores while the YouTube cut of the ad had a 66% full view rate (meaning people didn’t skip it when the chance was available) something that Mcilvenny describes as a “massive celebration” of the creative on what has become a “really important” channel for the brand.

Building brands on digital

The campaign was a big investment in brand marketing, something that is important in a big-ticket purchase category like mattresses. Mcilvenny is aware of the importance of staying “top of mind” when a customer may only come into market every seven or eight years – and believes that Silentnight’s marketing efforts address that challenge.

“From a marketing budget point of view, awareness is important for us,” he says. “So, when we’re working on our media spend, and also in some of the digital social areas, it’s more about awareness than it is conversion, because for us it’s about keeping the brand front of mind.”

And digital has become a big factor in the brand’s media mix. Silentnight has been working hard to grow its presence on social channels in order to reach a younger audience, with influencers being seen as the best approach to do so.

Mcilvenny explains that the brand has been really embedding its influencer strategy over the past three years and is looking to turn up in places where “you wouldn’t expect them” to show up. He points to the partnership it started with YouTuber Joseph’s Machines, who built a Wallace & Gromit style contraption which featured a Silentnight bed to help it connect with an audience that might not have considered it before.

‘We are not a DTC brand’: Why Eve Sleep is positioning beyond mattresses“A lot of traditional brands are very risk-averse, but what we can do with social is take a little bit of a risk. We can work with a content creator; we can try something. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, it’s not like the entire media campaign has failed because we didn’t get it right,” says Mcilvenny. “It just gives us a little bit of leeway to try something different.”

But while Silentnight is working on its channel mix that doesn’t mean it believes there’s a huge amount of difference between each of its audiences when it comes to selling them a sleep solution.

“The difference is in the channel. The difference is where they are and where you can reach them. But the heart of the message itself is that people want to sleep more. They want to get better sleep. They want to feel better the next day,” he concludes.