10:PM turns abandoned mattresses into unmissable media via Howatson+Company
Over 1.8 million bacteria-laden, skin-cell-infested mattresses are illegally dumped in Australia every year. Together with Howatson+Company and director James Dive, mattress startup 10:PM has turned several of them into guerrilla billboards.
Each execution exposes the condemning, rancid stories held within the fibres of competitor’s products. A stark contrast to 10:PM’s Aussie-made, microbe-neutralising mattresses.
Targeting inner-city Sydney suburbs, the 10:PM team located discarded mattresses and wrote bespoke long copy about each one, condemning them as rancid and suggesting a new, better alternative from 10:PM. These messages were converted into mattress-sized stamps, one judgemental letter at a time, before the team installed the ‘bed-verts’ in the same locations they were found
The mattress billboards have taken curious onlookers by surprise. Exposing a global gathering of dead skin particles in Bondi backpacker-land, an underground swinger scene in affluent Watson’s Bay, a queen who partied too hard in Pride capital, Darlinghurst, and more.
Says Harrison Reid, founder of 10:PM: “We’re stoked to be working with Howatson+Company to launch 10:PM. 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.”
Says Doug Hamilton, creative director at Howatson+Company: “This campaign takes advantage of an amazing free media that thousands of us walk past every day. With some loving craft and cheeky copy, our competitor’s old, soiled, dumped mattresses became the perfect vehicle to help 10:PM disrupt the category, and make anyone who sleeps, reconsider the state of their current mattress.”
The campaign runs across out of home, social channels and PR.
Client: 10:PM
Agency: Howatson+Company
Founder/CEO: Chris Howatson
MD: Renee Hyde
Executive Creative Director: Gavin Chimes
Creative Directors: Michael Kleinman and Doug Hamilton
Art Director: Raff Gandrabur
Copywriter: Zoe Finkelstein
Chief Strategy Officer: Dom Hickey
Group Business Director: Katy Ward
Business Director: Sasha Thariani
Head of Production: Holly Alexander
Senior Editor: King Yong
Senior Account Director (PR): Melinda Durston
PR Executive: Millie Clout
Production Company: Scoundrel
Director: James Dive
Executive Producer: Adrian Shapiro
Producer: Charlie Taylor
DOP: Jordan Maddocks
Music & Sound: Heckler Sound
Composer: Johnny Green
Sound Designer: Dave Robertson
Executive Producer: Bonnie Law
67 Comments
This is great
What does 10pm do?
this copy slaps lol
Best thing I’ve seen this year. Brilliant.
If they put one of these anywhere near my neighbourhood I would swear to never buy anything from them.
Also, given that it’s a blatant awards grab, I thought it was going to be a campaign aimed at ending homelessness. Probably should have gone down that path. Nice type though, good luck at the awards shows.
Really like these. Great idea and execution.
This is absolutely EPIC.
This is so simple and smart and well done. Wish I made it
This is LIT FAM
This old queen’s come out on bottom
Nice but I had to read the whole thing to get what 10pm is all about. No one read so much copy in the street.
But it doesn’t look like they collect your old mattress which adds to the problem
Lol saw this ad the other day and new it was Howatson
I agree with Cam Dowsett. This is great!
Faith restored that good work can happen in Australia! Love it.
Love it. That copy is so, so good. Congrats to everyone involved.
Agency comments above aside, H+C resorting to scam now? Come on guys, when we gonna see some good work for an actual client?
…is very, very jealous.
This is incredible. Congrats to all involved.
I Hate how good this is. Well done H+Co
Awesome to see some fun work again. Nice one H+C.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/australianbeddingstewardshipcouncil_some-things-really-matter-a-lot-australians-activity-7044511321077268480-7Tjz?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
This seems like the kind of work that Thinkerbell would do.
Take a bow, H+Co.
1 in 14 people dump a mattress illegally each?
Naaaah
Straight from the playbook . And sadly a trip at 1st base.
Top notch writing. Comment section reeks as much as some of the mattresses, just of jealousy.
Guess how many mattresses this will sell?
You can’t just put ‘verts’ or ‘vertising’ on everything.
Lol, that’s great writing. ‘This mattress wishes it was a goldfish.’ Very good. Congrats!
‘Lol saw this ad the other day and new it was Howatson’
What a natural and organic thing to say.
These agency comments are out of control.
All this makes me do is associate your brand with disgusting old mattresses.
Also lmao at the agency spam in these comments.
This does a generic job for the category. What’s the takeout? ‘Your current mattress has microbes on it, buy a new one.’
Ok, thanks. Off to Forty Winks to see what’s on sale.
I don’t know what impact this will have on the business. However, I do know it is arresting and thought-provoking. I have now heard of a new mattress brand I didn’t know existed. Isn’t that the key goal of advertising – certainly, at least, for a start-up? Well done.
Unlike you, most people won’t encounter this brand on an industry blog.
No, but it does strike me as a low-cost and potentially high impact way of generating PR and word-of-mouth.
If everyone from the agency all make the same comments it looks worse than if no one commented
Is it just me or do these look like the retouched layouts? Has this actually run?
But seeing dirty, piss stained mattresses and hearing about how they are full of pounds of dead skin does NOT want me to buy a mattress
They should have stuck with the tried and tested “Shit Root” or the classic “Nothing really mattress” with black spray paint. A missed opportunity.
You guys are like Banksy.. only COOLER !!!!!!!
What’s it for tho? What’s 10pm do again?
This is a joy to read
God damn this is *chef’s kiss*
You’ve had two years of playing silly buggers. Time to do some real work on real clients.
‘Lol saw this ad the other day and new it was Howatson’
I saw it and thought it was Thinkerbell.
Flame retardants, formaldehyde, and benzene have been found in some mattresses and can be linked to health issues such as cancer, infertility, and developmental brain disorders. Not sure dumping old mattresses in neighbourhoods is a good for any brand. Especially one that makes mattresses.
Who is dumping a Mattress outside Marrickville Town Hall… in the run up to an election… at one of the busiest intersections
To the people who don’t like this… trying to work out what you would like? It’s simple, single-minded, scalable, engaging, with craft at every level.
To the person whittering on about differentiation, you might want to read your How Brands Grow, which completely debunks differentiation as a meaningful strategy. Or listen to Les Binet on the topic. Use it when you have it, otherwise the job is to say something differently- ie distinctiveness. Which this has in spades.
This is brand, pure and simple. It makes me feel like a mattress company is cool and puts them on my shopping list. It’s also just a creative agency swinging for the fences, which I kinda think an industry blog should applaud?
To the people who keep trashing Thinkerbell… why? They’re an agency that’s been built from ground up to be a significant player in our industry with celebrated work and loyal clients, which suggests the work is working. Which I think is a good thing, isn’t it??
I couldn’t agree more. Here is a brand trying to build its business through creativity – and specifically, advertising creativity. That is so rare nowadays. You can take pot shots at any piece of creative. However, to not just look at this and say, “well done,” is either jealousy or pseudo intellectualism.
Desperate for something for cannes. haha. Bless!
They’re definitely Photoshopped. Not sure if entirely or just a touch-up job. Could be either.
The warp filter on the copy is pretty obvious. Also, where are the cables for the lights?
Charlie Taylor you absolute superstar!
Scaleable? I think thats the problem, its obviously scammy. No one in the real world is seeing those mattresses. But as a creative idea sure, cool, the other stuff you said checks out. And at least this is for commercial product rather than saving…something (as any award winning thing seems to have to do now). The problem is awards are becoming pathetically irrelevant already and this is fuel to the fire.
This is excellent, but I read ‘bed-verts’ as a play on perverts not adverts, if that matters.
Such fun copywriting, I’d give it a nod in the jury room. Absolutely no idea how this is meant to get people to know this brand, that no one has ever heard of either. Shocking bit of brand work, but undoubtedly a bit of a fun and creative free hit for the peeps who worked on it in their spare time
The problem with this work is that it’s clearly an agency initiative designed to win awards, rather than a genuine brief from a paying client. It’s cheating. We all have good ideas, but we don’t pay for them ourselves and pretend they’re genuine.
There’s literally videos of them being printed?
Why/how does politics have anything to do with it? Nice idea though.
Tells me everything about the agency, nothing about the mattress. It is a mattress they’re flogging, right? Talk about appetite appeal. Like trying to to sell a hot dinner with an image of a meal you found in a bin. This might be some cutting social commentary, but I doubt it’ll earn more than a laugh. Classic adland giving itself another wristy.
Check out 0:22 in the first vid. Can’t have an agency spot without the wokies making it bafflingly political these days now can we.
“ The campaign runs across out of home, social channels and PR.”
– a simple search reveals it got no PR outside advertising industry blogs
– on Social 10:pm has 600 followers
– no regular human stopped to read these as out of home.
Reality is these were never made for potential customers
Classic H&staff idea – we’ve seen this movie a few times but it’s good to see the narrative remains the same.
This is a funny idea. Hope it sold some mattresses.
Putting this idea to the side for a second, it seems like our industry needs education on how PR works. This idea is too heavily branded, so that cancels out PR beyond industry PR. Surely the client was aware this would get no earned media when they agreed to do it?
Folk don’t dump mattresses in vertical positions to suit potential Guerrilla Ad campaigns. They dump them flat on nature strips . This stinks.
Very good writing.
Honestly, in this industry I sometimes feel like the little kid in the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. This is not a good idea. If I was a client, why would I put my brand name on a soiled mattress coupled with copy that talks about how gross the soiled mattress is? Am I crazy? Am I stupid? Have I missed something? Or can everyone else see that it’s a bad idea framed as “innovative and cutting edge”?