Leesa Sleep's social challenge asks people to go bedless for charity

Brief:

Leesa Sleep is asking people give up the comfort of their beds for one night in a social media campaign to raise awareness about the hardship that many children face during the pandemic. The direct-to-consumer (DTC) mattress brand will donate a bed to a needy child as part of its "1 Bedless Night Challenge," per an announcement emailed to Mobile Marketer.
To participate in the challenge, Instagram users must follow the @leesasleep account and share their experience of sleeping without a bed for one night in a post with the #1BedlessNight hashtag. Leesa will donate one bed for every challenge participant Nov. 23-29, with the goal of giving away 2,000 beds.
The campaign will be supported by celebrities and influencers, per details emailed to Mobile Marketer. Leesa also plans to donate one mattress to a needy child for every one of its Hybrid or Legend mattresses sold on Giving Tuesday (Dec. 1), the charitable movement that seeks to counterbalance the consumerism of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the broader holiday season.

Insight:

Leesa's social media challenge aims to raise awareness for a cause that's especially meaningful to its mattress brand and corporate mission of helping children. By asking people to share the experience of sacrificing their beds for one night in the hashtag challenge, Leesa can reach a broader audience as people urge others to participate. The brand has a modest goal of activating 2,000 participants, which appears feasible considering that Instagram has an estimated 140 million users in the U.S. By running a campaign on social media, Leesa is more likely to reach younger consumers who tend to more engaged in combatting social issues than older generations.

Leesa is among the brands that have recently launched cause-driven campaigns with most consumers saying they want to see brands contribute to society during the pandemic. Among the more recent examples of socially conscious efforts, food delivery app DoorDash hosted its #WhyIDash effort to highlight the benefits of its flexible work arrangements while donating to the charity group founded by NFL player Prince Amukamara. GSK's cold and flu medicine Theraflu last month urged Black and Latinx consumers to get a flu shot with its #FightingFluTogether campaign that enlisted influencers to hand out "sick kits" containing self-care items to their followers. Before that, software maker Adobe's #GlowingGone campaign sought to raise awareness about marine health by asking people to post pictures to social media while using special digital lenses.

The pandemic has made corporate giving campaigns more important for brands that aim to show how they contribute to social betterment, a message that's likely to be amplified this holiday season. Seventeen percent of children in the U.S. last year were in poverty, and the pandemic likely made things worse, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the nonprofit group focused on child welfare. Leesa has donated more than 38,000 mattresses among nonprofit groups in North America, including Covenant House, Thrive Arizona and The Green Chair Project, according to the brand.