Better Sleep Month 2008: Sleep and Physical Performance

2008 marks the third year of the Better Sleep Council’s (BSC) five year plan to focus key messages around a central sleep-health theme and build outreach efforts. Following last year’s successful program emphasis on sleep and work productivity, 2008 efforts spotlight sleep and physical performance, including the important role a mattress plays in quality sleep. Specifically, this year Better Sleep Month (BSM) aimed to raise awareness regarding how sleep impacts physical fitness, including its effects on activity levels, motivation, morale and productivity as well as its impact on overall well being.

Campaign efforts continue to reap tremendous results. Ongoing media monitoring shows more than 125 million media impressions garnered to-date, with more to come.

2008 Strategic Partnerships

American Chiropractic Association

The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) launched a strategic partnership with BSC beginning in April to inform chiropractic doctors and their patients about the important role a mattress plays in getting a good night’s sleep. To encourage education, ACA sponsored a free give-away of Better Sleep Guides to doctors across the country. The BSC-ACA partnership was announced in the April issue of ACA’s flagship publication, ACA News, which is distributed to more than 60,000 members and doctors of chiropractic and also announced in ACA’s weekly e-newsletter, which reaches more than 40,000 pertinent readers. Additionally, ACA announced the partnership on their Web site, ACAToday.com, which now offers permanent links to the BSC for consumer education.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Women’s Health (HHS)

For the fourth consecutive year, BSC is a featured partner of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women’s Health program in coordination with Better Sleep Month. The highly visited consumer Web site for National Women’s Health Week (www.womenshealth.gov/whw)features links to sleep and health tips from the BSC under the “Get Health Information” page.  Targeted as a “go to” source for sleep-health information, BSC is listed under the“sleep” section of the national women’s health information site, along with a link to the downloadable Better Sleep Guide.

President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, President’s Challenge

Engaging an online partnership for BSM 2008, the President’s Challenge features the Better Sleep Council on their Web site as an advocate for health and wellness in the non-profit sector. 

Annual Better Sleep Month Survey

To support BSM media outreach efforts, BSC conducted the annual BSM nationwide consumer survey to gauge Americans’ awareness of how sleep (or lack thereof) impacts daily physical performance, agility, motivation and overall productivity. The survey results were incorporated into various aspects of May’s campaign.

Spokesperson Dr. Bert Jacobson

Co-author of ground-breaking mattress research recently published in the Journal of Applied Ergonomics, "Grouped comparisons of sleep quality for new and personal bedding systems,", Dr. Bert Jacobson signed on for a second year as the BSC’s 2008 BSM spokesperson. With foremost knowledge of new compelling research, Dr. Jacobson skillfully spoke to the importance of sleep quality, mattress replacement and the impact of sleep deprivation on physical performance. Additionally, Dr. Jacobson was featured in a Q&A Pod cast on the BSC Web site.

Results: Newspaper and Magazine

Highlighting May as Better Sleep Month, the BSC issued a nationally distributed press release in both English and Spanish, and conducted media outreach to more than 300 media contacts in the top 100 markets. Print coverage canvassed the country, including featured articles in The New York Post, The Tennessean, ACA News, Sea Latino (Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New York) and even the national Children’s Digest, among many others.

Results: Television and Radio

New Video Footage

To visually supplement broadcast coverage of BSM and the BSC throughout the year, BSC orchestrated a video production shoot to update the existing video library. The new three-minute video showed rested versus sleep deprived men and women working out and included footage of various gym activities such as running on the treadmill and lifting weights. The b-roll footage was used by television stations across the country in conjunction with the television Satellite Media Tour.

WJZW-FM (Washington, DC) Radio Partnership

For the third year running, BSC has partnered with WJZW-FM (Washington, DC) to promote Better Sleep Month. Through a month-long ad campaign, WJZW ran daily advertisements (18 in total) promoting the sleep awareness month, more so encouraging listeners to pick-up their free copy of the Better Sleep Guide at the local Mattress Discounters.

Satellite and Radio Media Tour

Dr. Bert Jacobsonspoke with 30 local and national broadcast outlets across the country about the importance of sleep to physical performance and overall well-being on May 6 for the BSM Satellite and Radio Media Tour. Dr. Jacobson also discussed how his new research points to the importance of evaluating your mattress every 5-7 years for optimal comfort and support. Dr. Jacobson’s live interviews were featured across the county, and packaged mattress segments were also featured on stations such as WHO-TV (Des Moines, IA) as well as hundreds of other national and local airings through a generic packaged interview.

National News Package

Better Sleep Month coverage swept the country with a specially produced BSM news package entitled “In The Know.”.  The 30 second narrative news vignette featured Dr. Bert Jacobson and aired on a variety of cable, satellite and broadcast TV channels and programs during the week of May 19. Placements include First Business, a morning business program syndicated to more than 200 broadcast stations across the country; DirecTV News (CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC and The Weather Channel); and DirecTV Lifestyle (A&E, BET, Jazz, Discovery Home, DIY, Fine Living, FIT TV, Food, Hallmark, HGTV, Travel Channel, TLC, TV Guide Channel).

Additionally, BSC edited and translated the “In The Know” segment into a :60 Spanish-language news package entitled “BSC Enfoque Informativo.” The news vignette aired on CNN en Espanol, Fox Sports en Espanol, Telemundo East, Telemundo West, Galavision (Univision), Mun2 and Discovery en Espanol.

Results: World Wide Web

Updates to Bettersleep.org

Prior to May, BSC’s Web site was reorganized to support and promote BSM efforts. Receiving significant content and flash design enhancements, the Better Sleep Month homepage enticed visitors to dive further into the site to learn more about sleep and work productivity. To promote consumer education, internal Web pages included a special podcast Q&A featuring Dr. Jacobson, a spotlight on sleep and work productivity, and highlights from the 2008 survey results.

Online Placements

Online coverage of BSM appeared among a variety of content-rich sites including Forbes.com and NYPost.com. Bloggers such as Practice Essentials favored the sleep and physical performance theme, as did authority online health outlets like NewsRx and Pharma Business Week.

Online Marketing

In efforts to boost Web traffic to bettersleep.org, BSC initiated three online marketing campaigns during the month of May. Working with iVillage.com, a banner campaign targeting female users was developed. This campaign netted 1.3 million impressionsand almost 1,000 site visits. The three banner ads spotlighted sleep and physical performance, including the important role a mattress plays in quality sleep. Additionally, working with About.com, BSC targeted text advertising to sections of the site relating to health and fitness, individual sports and exercise. Ads targeted to the Back and Neck Pain section performed best, with a high click through rates. The same campaign was initiated on Google’s Content Network, which includes general interest sites such as nytimes.com and CNN; health sites like Fitness.com, HealthCentral, and Revolution Health; and women’s interest sites such as Reader’s Digest, Redbook and FabSugar.com. These ads netted nearly 4 million impressions of the Better Sleep Month message across the Internet.

Industry Outreach

To support and encourage industry outreach, BSC created an online retailer toolkit which was featured in the April edition of Sleep Savvy and the corresponding Web site, www.sleepsavvymagazine.com.Members could download campaign tools and materials, including a customizable press release, media talking points, fact sheet and survey results to help educate consumers on the topic of sleep and work productivity, as well as a sales driver on the local level. Retailers across the country utilized the 2008 tool kit, with customized retailer press releases running in the Jefferson Democrat (Brookville, PA) and Transylvania Times (Brevard, NC), to name a couple. Additionally, paid BSM retailer advertisements and promotions ran in the Three Village Times (Elmont, NY), Canastota Bee-Journal (Canastota, NY) and Albany Democrat-Herald (Albany, OR), among others.

Looking Ahead

BSC now begins preparations for its fall product campaign. Be on the look-out for details in BedTimes Bulletin and Sleep Savvy on the campaign and ways you can get involved and make the most of BSC resources. For more information on BSC and its range of activities, please contact Karin Dillner at 703.683.8371 or kdillner@sleepproducts.org.