This campaign is literally about getting your money to work for you while you SLEEP!

Thursday: Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing FROM THE DESK OF MILES EVERSON: Are you familiar with guerrilla marketing? For those of you who aren’t, allow me to briefly explain what this is. Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional strategy that is simple to appreciate, easy to execute, and sometimes, inexpensive. I personally like this strategy because it has the ability to provide fresh and captivating ideas on how marketers can get their target audience hooked. I believe professionals in the business and marketing worlds should utilize this strategy. Today, let’s talk about a clever guerrilla marketing campaign in India. Continue reading below to learn how one organization used an unusual competition to capture Indians’ attention and make them rethink their habits. CEO, MBO Partners Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute

This campaign is literally about getting your money to work for you while you SLEEP! “True wealth is HEALTH.” Having a healthy body is an important part of life. The healthier you are, the more you are able to do your job properly, as well as other things you need to do. However, it’s important to note that health is HOLISTIC. This means you shouldn’t just think that you only need to be healthy in one aspect of your life or body. Being truly healthy means you are well overall—mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. For now, let’s focus on the physical aspect of health… Being physically healthy entails having a good and healthy lifestyle. This includes: Eating a balanced diet Exercising regularly Having enough sleep … and more. Sounds easy to accomplish? Not really. In fact, several studies show that nowadays, one of the things people struggle with, thereby affecting their health and happiness, is getting enough sleep. Below, you’ll read a more detailed case study about one of the most sleep-deprived countries in the world… The Search for India’s Most Talented Sleeper According to various studies conducted in 2020, India is the second-most sleep-deprived country. The Great Indian Sleep Scorecard states that one of the contributors to this phenomenon is that 87% of Indians use their phones before bed. Oh no… that’s alarming! Because of that, WakeFit, a leading sleep solutions provider in India, decided to conduct an interesting campaign in the same year. The organization partnered with marketing agency Spring Marketing Capital to launch an interesting campaign. The name of the campaign? #SleepIndiaSleep! The initiative was launched in March 2020, a.k.a. The World Sleep Month. Here, a quick visit to WakeFit’s website revealed its true motive: To get Indians to sleep. … and that’s not all! At the same time the organization launched the campaign on its website, it also started a nationwide movement to look for India’s “Most Talented Sleeper.” The champion would bring home a prize money of 10 lakh. [Lakh: A unit in the Indian numbering system equivalent to 100,000.] Woah… talk about literally getting your money to work for you while you sleep! Sandeep Balan, Spring Marketing Capital’s Head of Branded Content, had to say this about the campaign: “We used this positioning to push people to get into the habit of sleeping on time and waking up on time. With shows and everything else, we just don’t sleep anymore. There are multiple comments on the YouTube video stating that they’re awake and watching this video… that’s why we wanted to make it fun and relatable.” Indians’ responses at the launch of the campaign and competition showed the marketing team that people are actually paying attention to campaigns that are FUN to participate in. With that in mind, Balan and his team went for a lot more inclusive guidelines where they could make the sleep competition a movement, encourage Indians to sleep properly every day, and get the country down in the ranks in terms of sleep deprivation. Meanwhile, Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, WakeFit's Co-founder, said: “Rather than speaking about our mattress, or trying to sell it, we felt it was important to get sleep back in the conversation. The sleep competition was all about finding those talented sleepers and providing them with Wakefit mattresses and access to sleep counselors, décor specialists, and so on—in a pursuit to make them sleep better.” As a part of the contest, every Indian state had its sleep champions. The campaign team would measure the quality of participants’ sleep. The state with the most number of points would earn the title of “National Sleep Champions.” Anyone and everyone could participate as long as they have a fitness and sleep tracker. This tracker was synced with WakeFit’s microsite to display participants’ sleep details in real time. Instead of directly telling participants to sleep on WakeFit’s mattresses, which are the campaign’s main product offering, the campaign team made sure to first get people into the habit of sleeping well. Subsequently, they provided the participants with things that could improve their sleep quality, including the mattress. The first phase of the contest was an invitation for participants. WakeFit ran the sleep competition from March 13, 2020 to March 31, 2020 to get as many people to participate in the nationwide campaign as possible. Was WakeFit’s #SleepIndiaSleep campaign effective? The sleep competition was overwhelmed with a total of 1.7 million registrants just after it was launched. This shows lots of Indians are really serious about getting their sleep habits corrected. Here are a few other results of the campaign: During its first week, #SleepIndiaSleep achieved “trending” status on X/Twitter, with over 6,000 tweets from social media users in India. WhatsApp users in India also forwarded thousands of campaign-related messages to their network via the app. Multiple posts related to the campaign circulated across the globe via social media. Great job , WakeFit! This campaign was a good start in bringing back sleep into mainstream discourse. — Overall, WakeFit’s campaign showed that marketing is not just about advertising a product or service and generating profits for a brand; it’s also about addressing customer needs and doing something to provide solutions. Besides, in a business and marketing landscape where lots of brands with similar offerings are vying for customers’ attention, standing out is definitely important. In the case of WakeFit’s campaign, it’s appealing to people’s desire to earn money with just one, menial job: To sleep properly. The result? The campaign made waves throughout India and got people from all ages, classes, backgrounds, etc. to participate in the FUN movement!     Hope you’ve found this week’s guerrilla marketing insight interesting and helpful. Do you want to know how this brand showcased the technological prowess of its F1 racing cars in September 2023? See it in next week’s article!