Burlington, ON-based Ikea Canada is hoping its new multi-platform marketing campaign will put consumers to sleep. Creative work developed by the furniture retailer’s AOR, Zig – including a print execution bolstered by an interactive digital component and a TV spot – promotes the soothing features of the company’s mattresses and bedroom furniture.

‘This builds on the success of Zig’s previous award-winning mattress advertising for Ikea, and continues to educate consumers about the level of comfort our products provide,’ said Hilary Lloyd, advertising manager, Ikea Canada.

Print ads with the headline ‘So comfortable you’ll need shorter bedtime stories,’ which will appear in the October issues of Style at Home and Decormag, include pared-down versions of bedtime stories including The Tortoise and the Hare and Little Red Riding Hood. The Tortoise and the Hare literally reads: ‘One day a tortoise raced a hare. He won. The End.’

Interactive rich media banners developed by Zig’s digital group started appearing in French and English on sites like yahoo.ca, sympatico.msn.ca, hgtv.ca and decormag.com this month. The banner ads play on the well-known ‘sleep like a…’ aphorisms, through which users can select from a list of options including log, baby or rock, and watch a man dressed as their option sleep on an Ikea mattress.

Television spots, which hit the air this month, plug Ikea’s bedroom furnishings by showing a mother meditating in her bedroom oasis while being blitzed by demands from her family. And newer work, in which women admire a new walk-in closet mimicking men in a den, also taps the laugh-out-loud vein. Media was handled by Mindshare.