Challenge

Sleepdays was a new bedding manufacturer based around the concept “Best sleep, anywhere.”

Compared with competing brands such as IKEA and Simmons, Sleepdays had lower name recognition and much fewer stores. However, their product quality was very competitive.

Given such market conditions, our objective was to come up with an idea to get more customers to experience the quality of Sleepdays’ vaunted products.

Idea

We chose an unconventional place for users to experience the products. Not in stores or the home, but on the highway.

In Japan, there are over 10,000 highway accidents annually. Surprisingly, half of these accidents are caused by drowsy drivers. Hard-working Japanese tend to continue driving without taking rests on the highway.

To address this, we opened the world’s first “hotel” at a rest area on the Tomei Expressway, Japan’s highest traffic highway. With the driver’s car as the guestroom, we made the car a relaxing nap room with Sleepdays products.

When a driver arrives in the rest area, a Sleepdays concierge turns the car interior into a comfortable bedroom like a hotel suite.

The hotel also offers wake-up calls so that drivers won’t oversleep, and room service that delivers meals and drinks.

In this way, parked cars were transformed into the guestrooms of HOTEL HIGHWAY— and a new medium for people to experience Sleepdays products.

Results

A flood of reservations had the hotel fully booked with tired drivers in an instant. Refreshed drivers shared their experiences on social media, and Sleepdays products sold like hotcakes!
Detailed results are as follows:

Product sales increased 160% year-on-year.

– Gained 20 million impressions and boosted social media brand mentions to 450% within a month.

– Occupancy rate consistently over 90%.

– Traffic accidents on the Tomei Expressway dropped from 37 to 18 in September compared with the previous year.