Wakefit.co's new campaign aims to breed sleepy millionaires

Wakefit.co's new campaign with Spring Marketing Capital encourages users to get adequate sleep every night for a chance to become a millionaire.

From the company that brought India its very first sleep internship, Wakefit is at it again. This time, the brand has teamed up with Spring Marketing Capital for a new ad film that encapsulates a contest it is running.

India is the second-most sleep-deprived country, according to studies. A quick visit to the brand's website reveals its true motive - to get Indians to sleep more. The company claims to be starting a nationwide movement to hunt for 'India's most talented sleeper' - a sleep champion who will compete for Rs 10 lakh prize money.

"We used this positioning to push people to get into the habit of sleeping on time and waking up on time. With shows and everything else, we just don’t sleep anymore. There are multiple comments on the YouTube video stating that they’re awake and watching this video… that’s why we wanted to make it fun and relatable," says Sandeep Balan, head of branded content at Spring Marketing Capital.

He explained that with the earlier campaign – the sleep internship – the prize money was Rs 1 lakh for 100 hours of sleep. This meant the user had to get nine hours of sleep every night. "The response we got made us feel that people are actually paying attention when we create campaigns that are fun to participate in. That’s why we went in with a lot more inclusive exercise where we can make it a movement and get people to sleep every day and, hopefully, get India down in the ranks when it comes to sleep deprivation," he adds. Spring Marketing Capital has partnered with Wakefit for all its national campaigns.

"Rather than speaking about our mattress, or trying to sell it, we felt it was important to get sleep back in the conversation - and this was Chaitanya’s brief to us, too. The sleep internship was all about finding those 22 interns and providing them with Wakefit mattresses and access to sleep counsellors and décor specialists and so on – in a pursuit to make them sleep better," says Balan. (Chaitanya Ramalingegowda is co-founder, Wakefit.)

Balan mentions that as a part of the contest, every state will have its sleep champions. "We will be measuring the quality of their sleep and the state with the most number of points is the group that will earn the title of national sleep champions. Right now, anyone and everyone can participate as long as they have a fitness tracker – once we identify the ‘best sleepers’ from each city, we will provide them with a fitness tracker and so on. Instead of directly pushing our mattresses, which are our main offering, the motive is to get people into the habit of sleeping well and, subsequently, we will provide them with things that can improve their sleep quality," he says.

He adds that sleep trackers help track the quality of sleep – the guys who are being shortlisted to represent their city, need to ensure they sleep well themselves. "We ask that they sync their sleep tracker to an app that will feed data on the quality of sleep into the website. These trackers give us access to data such as the quality of deep sleep, duration of REM sleep, and so on," explains Balan.

Balan tells us that Phase 1 of the contest is an invitation for participants. The brand will be running it for two weeks to get as many people to participate in this nationwide exercise as possible.

Commenting on external factors that affect sleep, he tells us that binge watching behaviour has become so normalised that people often feel like they’re missing out if they’re not caught up on their shows. “When people binge watch shows late into the night, they end up gaining very little, but nosing a lot. With the national sleep championship, we aim to reward them for getting the right amount of sleep with national honours,” says Balan.

Are Baby Boomers better off when it comes to sleeping patterns? Unlikely, responds Balan. For the previous generation, they’re losing sleep because of their mobile phones. It’s a new device that has entered their lives and they spend time watching videos on YouTube and using WhatsApp and so on, adds Balan.

Ramalingegowda claims that different people have different reasons for losing sleep, and combined with factors such as work stress, children's exams - they are likely to lose sleep. "Melatonin is what is naturally secreted by the body throughout the day to make a person feel sleepy. But if someone looks at their phone right before sleeping, the natural sleep cycle is disturbed," he explains.

Every year, Wakefit.co publishes a sleep report card, and this year, the survey had more than 50,000 respondents. Over three years, the company collected over 92,000 responses and we found that ninety-two per cent of the respondents were found to be sleep deprived, and they didn't even realise it. "When it comes to most businesses today, every brand is trying to elongate a customer's waking hours and engage with them late at night. Also, if you look at modern adults - whenever something happens in their life, sleep is the first casualty. We have invited participants above 25 for this contest because until the body turns 25, most people can manage with less sleep," he concludes.