Brief Explanation

The brief was simple: brand love was slipping, and the client wanted to connect better with its audience. There needed to be a piece of work that spoke to the heart, and did more than just sell product.

The Brief

An estimated half a million homeless people sleep on the streets in every metro city of Pakistan. Most of them are out of town laborers who work hard during the day performing intense physical labor and have nowhere to sleep during the night. Nowhere but the hard pavements. Moltyfoam, Pakistan’s largest manufacturers of mattresses, decided to help. With our promise of a good night’s sleep, we provided a solution to people sleeping outdoors. By using outdoor. We designed the world’s first BillBed – a billboard that converts into a bed at night. We put up 150 BillBeds across 9 cities with a budget of less than $20,000.

How the final design was conceived

The insight came from noticing that Pakistan is littered with thousands of billboards, and underneath those very billboards, on hard pavements, sleep thousands of laborers. From this issue arose a simple solution that not only advertised the product, but went one big step forward and actually helped people. The concept was highly relevant for the brand: they promise a good night's sleep. And who better to deliver that to than the very people who don't know such a thing? We kept the design of the BillBed simple: a vertical board that rotated ninety degrees to become horizontal, providing a comfortable layer of mattress for whoever would like to sleep on it.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The campaign instantly went viral on social media attracting the attention of politicians and celebrities alike who took notice of the situation, raising awareness of the plight of these laborers. Even though our goal was strictly CSR, the campaign renewed people’s love for the brand and ended up raising sales by 2%, a significant increase for a 'life event' product. In a recent survey, the love for the brand had increased by 68%, while purchase intent rose by 82%. Most importantly though, we provided a good night's sleep to countless homeless laborers, something that they truly appreciated. In interviews we took of the same laborers, a few reported that a better night's sleep on the BillBeds gave them the energy to work more the next day, thereby raising their income. The campaign has been running for more than 8 months now, and we continue to add 15 BillBeds per month in new locations.