Casper entered the industry as a powerhouse. Though it’s had its ups and downs over the years, its creative marketing ideas have always been a focus and a strength.
After keeping quiet for a few years following its acquisition by Carpenter, Casper has made significant moves to bring its brand back into the spotlight—including its first new marketing campaign in several years.
Torrie Leppla, VP of marketing for Casper, co-headed the creation of the news ads, and she tells Bedding News Now that the ads set out to answer the question of what Casper stands for.
“A lot of the early marketing that we did focused on the boxed bed and having one perfect mattress,” she said. “Those aren’t big differentiators anymore, so we wanted to reset and refresh what makes Casper special.”
When they asked themselves why Casper existed, they landed on the insight that Casper is a reliable brand, especially now that it’s backed by Carpenter, which has generations of sleep expertise backing.
“We’ve got this incredible product that we’re top-ranked on Consumer Reports for, so in our new video campaign, we talked about Casper being a reliable solution at the end of every day. Most of us can’t control our days, but you can control your nights by getting an amazing mattress that’s going to do what it says it’s going to do.”
Something notable about the videos is that none of them use the word “mattress” even once. The product is blended into the lifestyle of the people, and shows that it is the one consistent thing in their day.
Each video offers a different “nightmare” scenario—from not knowing you’re frozen on a screen during a work meeting to getting crammed into a malfunctioning elevator—and these are contrasted with the consistency of Casper’s mattresses. At the end of each chaotic video, each person is shown sleeping comfortably on their mattress at night.
“Many brands in the space right now focus on the technology or materials that go into it, and we wanted to show the emotional truth of the brand and bring that to life,” she said.” It is different than a lot of the other mattress brand ads out there, but it’s one that I think is going to work really well, and we’ve seen really strong results thus far. We’ve had good feedback from customers because that emotional narrative speaks to them differently.
However, the company was not taking a shot in the dark with this project. James DeStefano, Casper’s senior director, consumer & commercial marketing, said the team spent a large amount of time on research to understand what reliability means to people.
“I would say that we have always prioritized the voice of the consumer, but now its even more so with Carpenter, because they never had these insights,” he explained. “There’s been a lot of focus on research to inform the creative throughout the process, including testing concepts and provocation.”
Leppla added that feedback has been strong from Casper’s retailers, even with the videos only having been out for a few weeks.
“We’re anxious to continue to get feedback on how much foot traffic our retailers are getting,” she said. “We’re very focused on measurements, so we have a lot of measurement solutions in place to hopefully show with data how much traffic we’re driving, not just to our owned-and-operated retail stores, but also to our retail partners. We are making sure that we’re supporting our partners the best that we can. Initial feedback has been great, but the proof is in the pudding.”
