While trends come and go, the conversation around sleep (or the lack thereof) and its link to daily wellbeing is very much top of mind for most people. Calm found that 78% of adults agree that their quality of sleep affects their mental health. And while 2 in 3 adults (69%) report that they need over 7 hours of sleep to improve their mental health, only 1 in 3 adults (31%) get over 7 hours of sleep.
Given these insights, Calm looked for the right cultural moment to remind consumers why sleep is important to their mental health and drive awareness to its vast portfolio of resources to help people get to bed.
Enter Daylight Savings Time. While the biannual one-hour time change is a nationally debated and discussed topic across the country, it also affects the sleep of 2 in 3 Americans, who struggle to adjust to the shift.
Ahead of the Daylight Savings Time Change last Fall, Calm created 1-844-4-CALM-SLEEP - a sleep hotline featuring the brand’s sleep content to support the millions of people who have trouble falling asleep.
Calm surveyed nearly 10,000 adults across multiple markets in the United States and United Kingdom to support its campaign narrative and provide ownable, sleep-related insights around how a lack of sleep negatively affects mental health. The report, called The Snooze Report, found that people were not getting enough sleep; in fact, 91% of adults said they are not well-rested or feel tired at least some of the time and 3 in 4 people struggle with falling asleep and/or staying asleep.
To provide a solution for millions of sleep-deprived Americans, Calm created a Sleep Hotline (1-844-4-CALM-SLEEP) ahead of Daylight Savings Time and its one-hour November “fall back”. From Oct. 30- Nov. 30, 2023, callers were able to dial in and choose from a menu of options featuring content from Calm’s library of sleep resources ranging from Harry Styles’ ‘Dream With Me’ Sleep Story and gratitude meditations with Jay Shetty to soundscapes and peaceful music.
Calm launched a buzzworthy 360 marketing campaign to coincide with the hotline’s launch and the Snooze Report’s release. Nodding to the era of 1-800 commercials usually seen on late night TV and radio ad spots, Calm created a retro, social-first hero infomercial and still assets featuring 1-844-4-CALM-SLEEP to generate conversation and engagement. In addition, using attention grabbing data from The Snooze Report, Calm developed buzzworthy high impact Out of Home placements in NY, Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago, LA and Phoenix that drove awareness to 1-844-4-CALM-SLEEP and encouraged people to get sleep.
These efforts were all supported by a comprehensive earned media plan focusing on driving press coverage and social conversation around 1-844-4-CALM-SLEEP, Snooze Report and Calm’s overall commitment to support mental health through the lens of helping people get a good night’s rest.
The program drove awareness of Calm's vast portfolio of sleep content and inserted the brand into a trending cultural conversation with media outlets including USA Today, Fast Company, the New York Times, Her Campus and Forbes covering various elements of the program. In addition, the program was organically shared by next Gen creators and outlets such as @boywithnojob and The Best One Yet podcast.
The program was also a hit on social media and IRL. Calm’s Sleep Hotline infomercial social post earned 2.8 million+ impressions and its static post highlighting the hotline billboard in Times Square reached 268K+ people. Finally, users across the country were able to check out Calm content via 1-844-4-CALM-SLEEP, spending an average of four minutes per call.
