Mattress start-up 10:PM lacked the media budget to advertise with OOH like their competitors. So we created a new, high-impact outdoor media that was 100% free, made from competitor’s abandoned products.

10:PM is an Australian start up, selling Aussie-made eco-friendly mattresses to a younger audience (18-35). With no media budget, they briefed us to help launch the brand in a way that would drive fame and awareness.

Our solution was to hijack the millions of mattresses that are illegally dumped in Australia every year. Stained and soiled, they’re a gut-churning problem for the streets. But a game-changing way to launch a mattress brand. Lacking the budget to run billboards like our competitors, we created our own ‘Bed-verts’ - from their abandoned products. Condemning them as rancid and suggesting a better alternative from 10:PM.

More than 1.8 million mattresses are illegally dumped on Australian streets every year. Stained and riddled with bacteria, they’re unhygienic eyesore. Yet where the world saw a problem, we saw an incredible media opportunity.

Using social listening and a roving street team, we located discarded mattresses in key suburbs, microbiologically analysed them, then wrote bespoke copy about each. Condemning them as disgusting and suggesting a new, better, more hygienic alternative from 10:PM.

Armed with custom made printing stamps and battery charged lights, our street team converted the discarded mattresses into unmissable long copy billboards. To fuel conversation (and disgust), influencers shared Bed-verts on social media and we sent the results of our microbiological mattress analysis to journalists.

10:PM’s target audience was young professionals and young families, who value the importance of sleep, but are price sensitive, and see a mattress as a major purchase that they try to put off. Hence why millions of Australians hang onto their mattresses for 15-20 years, far longer than the recommended 8 year lifespan. To change this behavior, we needed to shock and disrupt them by highlighting that they and millions of other Aussies, may be unwittingly sleeping on a disgusting, unhygienic mattress. Analysis showed OOH was the most effective way to reach 10:PM’s target consumer. So in key major urban suburbs where they live, we used social listening and a roving street team to located dumped competitor mattresses in those every same suburbs and turn them into new, unmissable media spaces.

Every Bed-vert featured a story of its disgusting, stained past, brought to life as OOH in suburbs where 10:PM’s target consumers live, and was amplified through social and PR. Influencers and journalists were invited to visit and capture Bed-vert content to ignite discussion about 10:PM and its gutsy new campaign. Released to the public on Wednesday the 15th of March, 2023, the work is still running on social platforms.

Soon our mattresses received more attention than real billboards. Our mattress placements which were worth an equivalent of $1.6 million worth of out of home media. On social media, it garnered +5 million impressions in one week and reached 75% of Metropolitan Sydney. The campaign was extended through earned media, with 130+ of PR coverage, featuring across popular news and radio spots 9 Honey, The new Daily and Smooth FM. All for a $0 media budget.

OOH is a highly impactful and cost effective media channel for smaller brands seeking to generate awareness for a limited budget. It’s also a very popular media channel for mattress companies. 10:PM knew OOH was a key launch channel but lacked the budget to buy expensive placements like its competitors. So with Bed-verts we created a new form of unmissable media, directly under the nose of its competitors.

Australian suburbs all have a distinct personality. Some of these personalities are well known by the public. For example Bondi is a haven for backpackers, Erskineville is dog-obsessed, Newtown is a food mecca and Darlinghurst is the LGBTQIA+ capital of Australia.With Bed-verts, we tapped into these suburb personas, by writing community-specific long copy billboards about mattresses, and the private and public personalities of the neighbourhoods they were found in.