Wednesday, 10 May 2017 10:20

Branding: Mattress Firm Enlists Steve Wozniak to Update the Brand

When you're an established brand that needs a branding update, what do you do? Well, Mattress Firm is calling on Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to help bring mattress sales into the 21st century.

Following suit of rivals Casper, Eve, and Lessa, the 31-year-old U.S. chain that boasts over 3,600 stores is attempting to become a technologically-savvy mattress retailer while featuring mattresses from Serta Simmons Bedding (SSB). (In marketing-speak, we call that a branding update.) Earlier this week Steve Wozniak hosted a reveal for two tech-integrated mattresses, paralleling previous reveals done by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook for Apple. The reveal served as an introduction for Mattress Firm’s “Technology to Power Off” campaign, which was created by advertising network Droga5 in order to heighten the retailer’s prominence as a tech brand and to reach out to fatigued millennials as well as older generations.

Part of Mattress Firms' 'Technology to Power Off' campaign, this mattress is a revolutionary product for this market.

The reveal included the Simmons Beautyrest Black HybridPlus – a memory foam mattress that features individually wrapped coils for comforting support, as well as the Serta iComfort TempTouch - a foam mattress which uses breakthrough technology to regulate body temperature for a cooler night’s sleep.

“Fostering a spirit of collaboration, this partnership brings together the sleep industry’s best in product design and innovation coupled with Mattress Firm’s national footprint to bring better sleep to people across the country,” said Serta Simmons Bedding CEO Michael Traub. “Through our shared commitment to our customers, these products ultimately deliver compelling value based on their individual needs and sleeping preferences.”

New Branding Campaign

Mattress Firm’s exposé will be followed up by a digital, TV, and radio campaign with Wozniak’s pitch being released via a sponsored content post on Wired.com. “The average American isn’t lining up outside a mattress retail store waiting for the latest breakthrough in technology,” said Sicily Dickenson, Mattress Firm’s new CMO as of last year. “It’s about taking that first step toward just stopping the sea of sameness out there around sales and price and that perception that shopping for a mattress is going to end up like a used-car experience.”

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