How 10:PM grossed people out of fly-tipping mattresses

Context

According to Australian mattress startup 10:PM, more than 1.8 million mattresses are illegally dumped across the country each year.

Objectives

• Get people to tidy up their act and stop fly-tipping old mattresses
• Earn a disproportionate amount of earned media against a $0 budget

Strategy

“As a startup, we don’t have the media budget to reach millions of people like our competitors, so we used dumped mattresses to our advantage to create buzz and engagement, as well as reach people,”
said Harrison Reid, founder of 10:PM.

The brand created a low-budget campaign to raise awareness of the issue and for the brand. The campaign aimed to highlight the unhygienic nature of discarded mattresses by creating backstories for these mattresses found in Sydney suburbs, printed on the locations where they were discovered. For instance, a mattress near Parliament House was described as "perfectly designed for creatures devoid of backbone, like jellyfish or MPs." Another in Bondi emphasized the prevalence of dead skin and international travelers' residues.

Outcome

The "Bed-verts" campaign included short videos of each execution shared on social media and generated over 5 million impressions in a week, reaching 75% of Metropolitan Sydney - representing an equivalent value of $1.6 million in out-of-home media on a $0 budget.