Could Mattress Firm Pick More Awful People for their TV Ads?

Advertising, particularly TV advertising, is all about the viewer relating to the people in the ad. From the Pepsi Generation to today’s smiling, beaming prescription drug users wildly enthusiastic about taking the stuff (even though it comes with enough warnings to freak you out), we all can put ourselves up there on the screen with these folks. It’s a basic tenet of successful advertising.

So, why in the world would Mattress Firm’s new TV ad campaign include some of the most unrelatable, dislikeable and generally reprehensible types ever seen on the airwaves? If these are the people endorsing shopping at the retailer then that’s the last place I want to go to buy a mattress.

In a campaign that Adweek has dubbed “How Do These Awful People Sleep at Night? On Mattress Firm Beds,” that broke this spring, truly “awful” people do truly “awful” things and when asked how they sleep at night being so “awful,” answer that of course they use mattresses bought at the store.

One is a grandma-type who games an online dating service, another a guy who puts his smelly shoeless feet up on the armrest on the person in the airline row in front of him and a third someone who – in the best tradition of Seinfeld – double-dips at a buffet. There’s also a mother who yells at very little kids playing basketball for being – well, very little kids – and the newest one I’ve seen is a team mascot who blindsides another mascot with a vicious hit that would be outlawed by the NFL. Each time the culprit is asked how they sleep and each time they endorse the retailer’s mattresses.

Would any normal customer shopping for a mattress – other than those who are as despicable as the TV characters – want to identify with these horrible people and head down to their nearest Mattress Firm and spend $2000 on an extra-firm? I don’t think so.

In fact you’ve got to think they would head over to another store selling mattresses – ANY OTHER STORE – and take their business there.

The campaign is from the ad agency Fallon and maybe they did a lot of market research, maybe the spots are tracking as popular – they are funny – but I can’t imagine they are driving sales. The retailer has not put out any financials since the campaign started but for the previous quarter its sales were off 4.6%. Granted the entire home furnishings business is doing poorly, including mattresses, and Mattress Firm has the added complication of being in the middle of a potential takeover by one of its biggest suppliers, Tempur Sealy. I’ll be very curious what this new ad campaign does to its sales when it releases its next quarterly results, which should be any day now.

In the meantime, there may be more awful people coming along doing awful things. It’s only fitting because this campaign is awful.