Simmons updates classic bowling ball campaign
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, March 5, 2006
Atlanta — Simmons CEO Charlie Eitel knows it's difficult to go forward by going backward.
"In my career," Eitel said, "I've learned that it is just about impossible to be successful going backwards."
But you can get ahead by improving on successes from the past, Eitel suggested. And that's what Simmons is doing with its "new" bowling ball campaign, which updates an idea that Simmons capitalized on in the 1990s.
Simmons is not simply running the same commercials it aired a decade ago. The producer pays homage to the basic concept — a bowling ball dropped on a Simmons mattress won't knock over bowling pins resting on the bed. But it makes several significant changes in the commercials, which were shot on a famous Hollywood soundstage last December.
Tim Oakhill, senior vice president of marketing at Simmons, supervised the shooting of the new commercials on the same set where the old television classic, "Mr. Ed," was filmed.
While the old commercials showed a male actor in a lab coat dropping the bowling ball on a competitor's mattress unit, and then on a Simmons mattress, the new spots feature actress Cristin Mortenson, a trained opera singer who has played the female lead in "The Phantom of the Opera."
She dons a white lab coat and drops the bowling ball, nodding approvingly as the pins remain standing on the Simmons mattress. In that seven seconds of film, Simmons simply and powerfully conveys its basic brand message and demonstrates the benefits of its bedding, Oakhill said.
The camera crew filmed that part of the commercial at 11 p.m. "When we saw her expression we applauded," Oakhill recalled. "We gave her a standing ovation. She did it all so well."
Mortenson conveys an air of assured confidence as she nods at the camera.
Her work in the spots was so compelling that Simmons plans to continue its association with her. Eitel predicted that her work with the bowling ball campaign "will evolve to something at a higher level."
The new commercials will give Mortenson's bowling ball drop plenty of visibility with consumers. Eitel said Simmons will spend "in excess of $8 million" on the campaign this year, a figure that could grow to more than $10 million next year.
He noted that women buy beds, and said Mortenson will make women "feel comfortable" about buying Simmons beds. Eitel also said that Mortenson is shown in some spots lying on a Simmons bed "in a classy way."
Changing the bowling ball dropper from a man to a woman is only one of three key changes Simmons has made in the commercials.
Oakhill said the original spots did not show a finished bed and did not talk about the conformability of Simmons' bedding. The new commercials correct both of those failings.
In the 30-second "Test of Time" commercial, the narrator says Simmons Beautyrest bedding offers unsurpassed motion separation and conforms to the sleeper's unique shape, assuring undisturbed sleep. Mortenson is pictured lying on a bed of Simmons' Pocketed Coils.
The commercial says Simmons developed the Pocketed Coil technology and has improved it over the past 80 years, thus standing the test of time. Other mattresses have come and gone in that period, the commercial notes.
The Test of Time commercial shows Simmons bedding standing up to bowling ball drops in what appears to be archival footage shot in the 1920s, 1940s and 1960s. In reality, all of those scenes were shot in the latest film shoot, using actors in period dress and utilizing film techniques of the time. The shot from the 1920s, for example, used a hand-cranked camera to capture the herky-jerky look of early Hollywood films.
The bowling ball campaign, which Simmons says was the most successful campaign in its history, was a favorite with the company's dealers. And requests to "bring the bowling ball back" echoed loud and clear in conference rooms when Simmons met with a number of its key dealers last year, Oakhill said.
He said the bowling ball imagery has become an icon in the bedding industry, but noted that it is not easy to take icons from the past and extend them into the present. "You put yourself at a huge risk," Oakhill said. "The expectation level is very high."
Eitel said the original campaign "moved the market in the late 1990s." The bowling ball message "demonstrates what's inside our mattresses," he said. "We are proud of what's inside our mattresses."
The campaign "is money in the bank for our dealers," Eitel added. Some dealers have continued to air the spots over the years — and have gotten good response to them, according to Simmons.
Eitel predicted that the new campaign "will have a significant impact" in the market and will boost the fortunes of the flagship Beautyrest brand.
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