Well, if sex sells, and it’s one of the major tenets and
pillars of advertising wisdom, then this campaign ought to make the Sealy
mattresses fly out of the stores. Because while most other mattress brands are
focused on comfort, and getting a restful night’s sleep, and reducing pain, and
other stupid crap nobody cares about, Sealy is going in the opposite direction
entirely: demonstrating how if you buy a Sealy mattress, you’ll have loud,
obnoxious sex all the time, making your neighbors and family members hate you
and bang on the walls and such. And who wouldn’t want that?
So one of these ads shows the aforementioned annoyed
neighbors and family members banging on the walls and the ceiling in protest
against these loud, aural sexhibitionists, and then the ad says that whatever
you do in bed (wink, wink!), Sealy supports it! Oh, but what if you murder
people in your bed? Or rape people? Or swindle people with Internet scams and
fraudulent phishing telephone calls while relaxing on your wonderful Sealy
mattress: do they support that? Well, I
would have to say, based upon their tagline, that yes, of course they do! Because, after all, the ad
clearly and quite specifically states, with no exceptions whatsoever: “Whatever
you do in bed, Sealy supports it.” (But maybe they could say that they only
meant that the mattress supports it physically, as it holds you up while you do
it, and they never meant to appear as though they condone whatever perverse or
illegal activities you criminal types get up to, even though their tagline suggests they do.)
Then they have another commercial where we see an extremely
phallic-looking device pumping up and down on the bed while porno
movie-sounding music plays on the soundtrack; and then they show it to us from
a different angle, and we see that the part that’s pumping on the bed is shaped
like a human butt. So here we have a very suggestive scenario, showing us a
butt moving up and down, and a phallic shape pumping up and down on a bed, and
an announcer using very sexy and seemlingly innuendo-filled speech, in French,
no less: Very classy! (Maybe this
machine is working off its sexual frustration from watching all those Svedka
Vodka sex-bot ads?)
But what if it’s the case that Sealy has put Spanish
Fly-style erotic arousal products in their mattresses, like with a cat-nip pillow
or something? Why, then they would spearhead one of the largest population
booms the world has ever seen, and at the worst possible time, too! Why,
they’re trying to elicit a Soylent Green-type
of dystopian futurist scenario, and it will lead to resource-depletion and
global-warming and cannibalism and misery galore! Oh, the humanity! And all to
sell some mattresses for some filthy lucre? Have they no hearts; no souls?
Well, at least while I worry myself to death thinking about all the horrors
that will result from this advertising campaign’s poisonous effects upon our
society, I’ll be lying down in absolute (albeit paranoid and sleepless)
comfort, due to my Sleep Number bed! (Hey: Do you suppose they make “Sex
Number” beds? Maybe they should! The tagline could be: “I set mine to sixty-nine!”)
Of course this is all just a silly joke. If Sealy wants to
differentiate themselves from a glutted market of sameness in the mattress
wars, they have to try something different, and this is most certainly that.
Hey, maybe future Sealy ads could have hot women in skimpy sheer Victoria’s
Secret nightgowns say: “I’ll only ‘do it’ on a Sealy!” And then the tagline
could be: “Get a Sealy, and get touchy-feely!” Or perhaps: “Sex on a Sealy
makes you hit the ceiling!” (<And apparently, it makes your neighbors hit the
ceiling too, but in a different way, and for a different reason!)
Here’s the loud & annoying sex ad (which they call “Good
Neighbors” {?}.):
And here’s the phallic/butt machine ad:
