Eight Sleep: Brand Positioning Case Study

Sleep. Fitness. 

Put those two words together and you’ve got a $500 million company.

This week we’re talking about the “bed in a box” brand that’s disrupting the disruptors…

💼 The Brand: Eight Sleep

Eight Sleep is a sleep fitness company specializing in smart mattresses and mattress covers that heat and cool to regulate your body temperature. They’re the first “sleep fitness” company and now worth nearly 2X more than bed in a box pioneers like Casper.

💛 The Heart (Mission & Vision)

First things, first. Who's ever heard of a mattress company having a mission? Theirs is to fuel human potential through better sleep. In the words of their cofounder Alexandra, this mission is also what led them to niche down and find their ideal persona.

👤 The Head (Strategy & Positioning)

The mattress market is crowded. There’s a Mattress Firm on nearly every corner and every day there seems to be a new “bed in a box” ad popping up in my feed. Eight Sleep is side stepping the competition with perfect positioning. It’s not just a mattress promising good sleep, it’s a sleep system promising good health.

Speaking of perfect positioning… if you need some help with yours’ we created this free 10 Pillars of Positioning checklist you might like😉

DOWNLOAD NOW: Free 5-Minute Marketing Plan [Get Your Copy]

✋ The Hands (Tactics):

Eight Sleep takes sleep fitness seriously. Rather than just making the claim, they prove it with Eight Sleep sponsored athletes.

Snowboarders, Crossfitters, and even NBA stars are sponsored…

Why?

Because Eight Sleep knows that deep down we all want to be like our favorite athletes — and yes, we even want to sleep like them…

They even turned some sponsorships into case studies using the brilliant slogan “The better you sleep, the better you ________.” 

Eight Sleep’s consistency with this positioning strategy is impressive as it’s carried out across every channel and medium. Take a quick scroll on their Instagram page and you could mistake it for a fitness entity.

How You Can Steal Their Strategy

• Create a New Category with “Idea Sex.” Essentially, you just take two completely different words and concepts and throw them together. Sometimes, like in the case of “Sleep” and “Fitness” you uncover a brand new opportunity.
• Focus Your Marketing on Your Persona’s Ideal Identity.People don’t just want a mattress. They want a mattress that will make them feel healthier and reinforce their identity as a healthier person. What’s your persona’s ideal identity and how can you sponsor or partner with shining examples of people sharing that identity?
• Sell the Vacation, Not the Plane Ticket. If you want to sell a plane ticket you need to skip the boring parts and focus on pitching the vacation. Eight Sleep has done this by focusing on the dream outcome of using your mattress — waking up feeling healthy and rested — rather than selling the sleep itself.

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