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Transforming Emma Sleep into the UK’s bestselling bed-in-a-box brand
When bed-in-a-box brand Emma Sleep approached us in 2017, they were the underdog. Direct competitors like Eve, Simba and Casper had first-mover advantage in this emerging aggressive space.
With little product differentiation and their rivals already spending big on media, Emma asked us to help them stand out in a crowded market. What happened next was a game-changer.
The journey
First, we developed an ATL strategy fully integrated with all aspects of price and promotion, working in tandem with Emma’s digital strategy.
TV advertising was – and remains – a key channel for the brand. We actively took advantage of the changing TV landscape to deliver a superior strategy – outsmarting, not outspending, Emma’s competitors.
To support the TV activity, we rolled out tactical OOH campaigns, focussing on the London Underground as the perfect environment to reach Emma’s young professional target audience. Knowing how effective tube car panel advertising is, with longer dwell times, we ran hero formats to capture the attention of a highly engaged audience.
Recently, with Emma’s brand awareness at an all-time high, we rolled out bespoke TV sponsorships, helping Emma deliver additional reach on key channels.
The results
Since the launch of our strategy, Emma has exploded onto the mattress scene and overtaken their direct competition.
The year after we started working with them, Emma received more website traffic than their competitors. Two years after, they became the UK’s bestselling bed-in-a-box brand and turnover increased by over 200% year on year.
Flash forward to 2020 and their flagship product, the Emma Original, was the most sold mattress in the UK. During Black Friday 2020, a key tactical period for media investment, Emma sold a mattress every two seconds — with over 25,000 products sold over the promotional weekend.
Emma’s unprompted brand awareness went from the lowest of the direct competitor set to the highest, overtaking all those bed-in-a-box brands that had come before. Q1 2021 saw year on year revenue grow 95%, while profitability increased by 195%.
Today, bed-in-a-box mattresses make up around 25% of the industry market share. It’s a concept that is here to stay — and so is Emma.