In 2011, IKEA embarked on a mission to put the nation ‘Happy to Bed’. The aim of the project was to make people think differently about their neglected bedrooms and create a new culture around bedtime.We discovered from sleep experts that you should start winding down 2 hours before bed for a good night’s sleep. We do this as children with proper bedtimes full of stories, bubble baths and hot chocolate, but most adults just hit the pillow. We wanted to recapture bedtime for grown-ups.To that end, we created a rich, immersive campaign to remind people when it was bedtime, and inspire and enable them to make the most of it with tools, content, and experiences.

The campaign led us to push advertising’s remit into content commissioning and a media-first use of real-time TV advertising. And best of all, we helped the nation happily get their 40 winks.

We kicked-off with our Happy to Bed Clock TVC. Around 10:30pm, this appeared in ‘real-time’, chiming a gentle reminder to go Happy to Bed.

We followed this with the ‘Playfight’ spot, a couple’s epic pillow battle in a metaphorical treehouse.

We didn’t want Happy to Bed to be just an amazing slogan, so for the past 6-months, award-winning journalist, Tim Samuels, has been investigating what it means to go ‘Happy to Bed’ from scientific, philosophical and plain ridiculous angles, all of which you can follow on our blog happytobed.com.We used Tim’s findings to create tips and films for IKEA.co.uk, showing how IKEA products could help make bedtime happy. Time-sensitive banners and a sponsored radio show spoke to people during bedtime.But not everyone can go Happy to Bed at 10.30pm. So we invented the Happy to Bed App. This calculates your personal bedtime and sends you tips for going Happy to Bed.

We’ve successfully and consistently increased sales across the entire bedroom (storage, lighting, textiles etc) since launch and surpassed targets for beds and mattresses, formerly a weak area for IKEA. PR and social media metrics show Happy to Bed became national news and captured the hearts and imagination of customers of all ages.