Dream Recommendations Campaign
Issue 19 | June 2011
Agency
Agencytwofifteen
Creative Team
Executive Creative Directors: Scott Duchon, John Patroulis ; Interactive Creative Director: Magnus Oliv; Creative Director: Paul Caizzo, Nathan Frank; Art Director: Paul Caiozzo, Nathan Frank; Copywriter: Paul Caiozzo, Nathan Frank
Production Team
Director Of Integrated Production: Tom Wright; Production Management: Ray Barnes; Production Company: Tool of North America; Director: Geordie Stephens; Production Company: Lifelong Friendship Society ; Director: Jason Jones
Other Credits
Agency Producers: Mandie Bowe, Joyce Chen; Account Supervisor: Melissa Hill
Date
March 2011
Background
Help Remedies is a not a traditional OTC pharmaceutical brand, so when agencytwofifteen was asked to develop a marketing program for “Help I can’t Sleep,” it was clear that the advertising shouldn’t speak like a traditional OTC pharmaceutical company, but rather be as simple and strangely utilitarian as the brand itself.
Idea
Rather than talk about insomnia or the frustration of being unable to sleep, agencytwofifteen moved the conversation a step beyond, to explore dreams – the funny and sometimes strange things that come to the surface once a person falls asleep.
Help I can’t Sleep has the advantage of being sold in places people actually need help going to sleep –in hotels, in-flight, in 24-hour drugstores, on late night television, online, on a mobile website and on Duane Reade’s Times Square screens, which are the last thing many people in New York see before they go home and head off to bed.
Nine different films were made, from 30 seconds to 2 minutes in length, featuring an array of funny and sometimes outlandish dream scenarios – from human sized puppies lamenting their lack of extra-marital affairs to a milkmaid who lives in a picture that hangs in a dermatologist’s waiting room.
The dream recommendations were complemented by an app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which “records” a person’s dreams and posts them to Facebook or Twitter. The app allows people to test whether they are having the dreams that Help I can’t Sleep recommended, or some other wonderful dream, and it shares those dreams with their friends live.
Also a sandman roamed the streets of New York late at night, handing out hand drawn Help I can’t Sleep “dream recommendations.”
The idea extended to pack design, with dream recommendations on each box of Help I can’t Sleep.
Results
The campaign launched on March 24 so preliminary results will not be available for another month at minimum.
Our Thoughts
What I like about this is that it doesn’t deal with the benefit of the product – a good night’s sleep – but with the benefit of the benefit. When you sleep well, you dream. The benefit of the benefit of the benefit would be that you have great and glorious dreams and a couple of these get close, in a weird sort of way.
The free app is medicinal in its own right, suggesting that all you have to do is download it to be given a night of improbable dreams.