Urban Ladder takes home its first award at the Abbys

Popularly known as Goafest, Abbys is India's oldest and most popular advertising award show - often referred to as the 'Cannes of India'. This year, Urban Ladder entered some of its creative work to Abbys 2017. Urban Ladder had 5 entries, of which the hugely viral Mattress Tester campaign picked up a gold in the Public Relations category, and a bronze in the Social Media category. The same was also shortlisted in the Direct Response category.

 In addition, Urban Ladder's brand film 'Let's Create' was shortlisted in the Film Single and Film Craft category, and a social media post titled 'Reclaim Your Space' was shortlisted in the Digital Craft (Writing) category. All the creatives were conceptualised in-house with no agency support and - barring the film - cost no money to produce or distribute.

About the campaign:

Working professionals are an overworked bunch, and are always looking for something that's easy to do. Why not ask them to apply for the position of a mattress tester? To make it sound super realistic, Urban Ladder created a job profile on LinkedIn. People got particularly excited after reading the "Desired Skills and Experience" section, which read:

The job description

On a typical day, you’ll need to sleep on various Urban Ladder mattresses to check for comfort and ease. Each mattress will need to be tested under different conditions, such as after consuming coffee and other caffeine-based drinks, after travelling long distances, as well as under different light and sound conditions. 

The idea was the perfect balance of possible-real-job (mattress testing is a real job in some countries) and too-good-to-be-true. Plus, it tied in well with Urban Ladder’s offering of mattresses. Two days before April Fools', Urban Ladder shared a simple post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, with a link to the "job description", also hosted on LinkedIn. The post asked ‘lazy and unmotivated people’ to apply for the position of Sr. Mattress Tester. In a matter of hours, the post went viral with several shares and retweets across platforms. The same day, websites like Buzzfeed, Scoopwhoop, Huffinton Post, The Times of India and many more run a feature on the prank.

 By April Fools', there were over 1000 applications on LinkedIn and via email - some serious, some in jest. There were several international applicants asking us if we could send the mattress to them so they could "work remotely", but were also willing to relocate if required. Applicants included co-founders of other start-ups and employees of some of India's largest e-commerce websites.

The job posting on LinkedIn went viral across Facebook, Twitter and even Whats App. There were close to 22,000 views, press coverage that made its way to over 20 million internet users and over 1200 applications for this job posting. All for a grand total of zero rupees.  For now however, the job of mattress tester continues to be a pipe dream.