Sleep Talk Reviews: Ikea uses sleep talking customers to illustrate a good night's sleep

The questionable nature of online reviews is parodied in Ikea’s ‘Sleep Talk Reviews’, which features an oddly convincing deadpan narrator.

Last week, we commented on how smooth and convincing Ikea’s voiceovers are. But be aware, the dulcet Swedish tones can also be used to deceive, this time hoodwinking us with an unusual new source of product reviews: people talking in their sleep.

In its latest campaign, ‘Sleep Talk Reviews”, the Swedish furniture giant invited real consumers to spend two nights sleeping inside a fully operational Ikea store, capturing everything from snoring to surreal, half-formed sentences.

The resulting campaign seeks to draw your ire towards online reviews and polished testimonials with something far stranger: subconscious reactions recorded while participants are asleep.

Created by Rethink Canada, the work reframes one of the most overclaimed categories in advertising.

Mattress brands typically rely on carefully scripted endorsements, but Ikea instead insists that the proof is in the pudding and presents sleep talking as a proxy for comfort, presumably because it only happens when people are deeply at rest.

The campaign is a rare offering in that it mixes parody, an air of truth, and some experiential action into a faux-brand endorsement, building on Ikea’s long-standing focus on real life rather than aspiration.

By taking content from the one moment where consumers are at their least performative, Ikea might have hit on something here.

The ad is ridiculous and oddly believable, but ultimately plays well to Ikea’s subtle sense of the surreal, and affection for its Swedish roots.