IKEA's late-night 'u up?' DMs sell 36% more mattresses — One Show Gold Pencils

In North America, IKEA isn't people's first choice for mattresses — the category is dominated by specialist brands like Sleep Country, Casper and Endy, and IKEA faced a real mattress sales deficit in 2025. The brand needed a campaign that changed the perception quickly and moved product.

Rethink Toronto flipped a piece of cultural shorthand on its head. In North America, "u up?" is the classic late-night booty-call text — so IKEA used it to slide into the DMs of sleepless Canadians on Instagram, targeting people exactly when they were lying awake on uncomfortable beds. Responders got a 15% discount on any IKEA mattress on the spot, and banter between 10pm and 5am could win a mattress outright. The same line ran on billboards outside apartment buildings at night and on Snapchat.

As the organic conversation exploded, something unexpected happened: competitors began responding. Sleep Country and The Brick piggybacked with sleep messages of their own, and even condom brand Durex joined in — every reply pushed IKEA's conversation further. The stunt generated 4.5 million earned impressions, coverage from AdAge, Strategy and Contagious, and a 36% year-over-year increase in mattress sales with a 17% lift in online visitation.

The work won three Gold Pencils at The One Show 2026 — two in The Indies and one in Creative Effectiveness — turning a cheeky DM into proof that IKEA could be a credible, confident sleep brand.