Have Gel & Foam Changed Presidents Day Forever?

Did the “father” of our country, along with one of the great leaders in world history, give their lives of service to see that a “great experiment in democracy” could succeed? Or, was it to be certain that tens of thousands of people could buy a new mattress on sale during a holiday created in their names?

To be sure, few will pause during the Presidents Day weekend to reflect on Washington’s brilliance at the Battle of the Chesapeake, or Lincoln’s bold (and interrupted) post-war bid for reconciliation. But they may not stop to contemplate what a night’s sleep might be like on proprietary coil technology covered in plush fabrics, either.

That’s because digital marketing has upended the mattress category with products that get shipped in a box with names like Avocado, Bear, Casper, Eight, Layla, Nectar, Puffy and Purple. By some accounts, there are now 150 or more mattress brands – mostly variations on foam – sold online competing for a combined $15B in total sales.

Three-day weekends became core to the mattress marketing playbook because couples typically both have a respite from work and can take the time needed to buy – particularly for something like a bed, which can be notoriously difficult to comparison shop. Many, of course, still will. But with the “store” on one’s screens 24/7, the ability to shop for foam in a box is ever-present. 

Which raises an intriguing thought: If you’re shopping for a mattress in 2019, what is Presidents Day actually for? Sure, there will be sales aplenty to help nudge you from contemplation to conversion. Though one could easily argue that shoppers – online oroff – have been trained to wait for a holiday like Presidents Day, knowing that there will be an incentive then to buy at a discount.

Well, let’s go back to two of the biggest drivers of the category: (1) an immense, and growing, number of competitors online; and (2) that if a couple is looking (or otherwise agreeable) to buying a new bed, times like a three-day weekend when they can shop together are a prime opportunity. And remember, the battlefield is now more around marketing than product.

Volumes of reputable research suggest that too much choice impedes any choice at all – if, for no other reason, the fear of making a wrong decision. So, here’s a radical thought: what if three to five online mattress brands were brought together to create a Presidents Day “Online Pop-Up Mall.” Don’t think aggregator or “independent review site,” think co-marketing. Sure, they’d be competing head-on, spurring the comparison that consumers will inevitably do anyway – but they’d be doing so in a far narrower field. If they were smart, they’d create a separate “lane” for each of their brands. And perhaps repurpose the investment for Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day.

The Mall could also gamify the experience. Create a mechanism for husband, wife, partner or friend to create his or her own “short list” of interested mattresses as well as attempt to predict what husband, wife, partner or friend will put on their list. This essentially would promote both self-directed and shared comparison shopping simultaneously. A Presidents Day promotion, in which one or more “list makers” can win deluxe bedding and other related items, would add the appropriate time-urgency and give it cultural context. And, of course, there would be significant opportunities for data analytics.

So have gel and memory foam changed Presidents Day forever? Nah. Though shopping channels have changed, many of the underlying consumer behaviors involved in decision making remain the same. 

“If you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write something worth reading,” Lincoln said. Perhaps he’d amend that if alive today to include, “or help sell something worth sleeping on.”