Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend. With young kids at home, my husband and I try to adjust the kids’ bedtimes a few days in advance of time changes so our bedtime and morning wakeup schedules aren’t too thrown off the day of (and after). Well, Sleepy’s, the mattress retailer, has also given daylight savings time some thought and is using it as the center of a clever PR campaign.
Sleepy’s has started a “Soften the Shock” online petition for moving the start of Daylight Savings Time to Saturday at 2 am instead of Sunday at 2 am – giving folks an extra 24 hours to get adjusted to the time change before starting the school and work week. (We’ve all heard the news reports that more accidents happen on the Monday morning after a time change.)
Kudos to Sleepy’s and their PR team for finding a creative way to remind consumers about healthy sleep and ultimately, their mattresses. PR for evergreen products can get stale but Sleepy’s used some traditional PR strategies – albeit with a 2013 twist – to get their name in front of consumers:
Challenge status quo – When the PR team or another team member recommended a petition to change the day that Daylight Savings Time begins, I’m sure there were some management groans. However, with social media and online collaboration sites like Care2 or Change.org starting and promoting a petition to raise awareness of an issue has never been easier.
Think outside the box – National Sleep Awareness Week, which ends on March 10, would have been a go-to PR hook but instead Sleepy’s linked their brand to the sleep-related “holiday” for a creative twist and seemingly less self-serving PR exposure.
Localize – No, I haven’t seen the Sleepy’s story on any of the major networks but instead I read about it in the digital version of my hometown newspaper with input from a healthy sleep advocate and a local neurologist board-certified in sleep medicine. Local news still matters.