Serta
Counting Sheep - Fluffy flock of adorable but
unemployed white sheep with numbers painted on their sides that
appeared in a series of successful mattress commercials
sponsored by the Serta Mattress Company. The reason the sheep
are unemployed is that Serta Mattresses makes such comfortable
products that more and more people are finding it easy to fall
asleep quickly at night, Consequently, the old practice of
counting sheep to put oneself to sleep is falling to the
wayside. Now, in search of new jobs the sheep wander the
countryside looking for a new gig.
Ad #1 In the first ad in the
series "Serta: Counting Sheep" a sleeping man is awakened by a
strange noise. Looking out of his bedroom window the man sees
a flock of sheep outside. They look in the man's direction and
a spokes-sheep for the group shouts "Hey! It's ten
o'clock...Ten thirty-eight. Want us to put you to sleep?" The
man informs his wife, "It's the counting sheep." but she just
rolls over in bed, pulls back the sheets to reveal a Serta
label on their mattress. "Didn't you tell them we got a Serta?"
"Did she say Serta?" asked the sheep. "Yeah." The husband
replies, "It's so comfortable, we don't need you anymore."
Disappointment fills the faces of all the sheep upon hearing
the word "Serta." Just then, a nearby neighbor opens his
window and says "Hey! Keep it down over there. I can't sleep a
wink!" Happy again, the sheep move in the direction of the
neighbor's house with smiles on their faces.
AD #2 Another Counting Sheep
spot finds the sheep approaching a clinic for Insomniacs.
Satisfied they have finally found a new home, the sheep are
horrified when a truck filled with Serta Mattresses pulls up
in front of the clinic. Collectively the sheep cry "NOOOO!"
AD #3 In still another Serta
Perfect Sleeper commercial "Penalty," a sheep says
"Serta
makes me so mad, I'd like to rip that mattress apart." He
controls his anger, but another sheep rips off the
do-not-remove-under-penalty-of-law label on the mattress and
the sheep
are arrested. When they
arrive in prison, someone asks "What are you in for?" A sheep
begins to answer "We got caught tearing..." but another sheep
interrupts him and continues "...Tearing a man to pieces? GRRR!"
Newer
commercials entitled "Squeegee", "Hobo". "Contract" and "Spies"
also appeared on US and Canadian television. They combined
animation with live-action and followed the sheep as they seek
alternative ways to make a living. Serta also produced 60-second
radio spots. In one spot entitled “Dewey and
Helen” the sheep plead with a couple to keep their job. In
another entitled “Stan” a sheep and a loyal customer talk on the
telephone. In 2002,
Serta Inc. won a Gold EFFIE Award for their Counting Sheep
Commercials (Category: Household Furnish and Appliance Award).
The ads were created by the Detroit, Michigan-based
W.B.
Doner & Co. Ad agency. The
Effie award is presented annually by the New York American
Marketing Association in recognition of the year's most
effective advertising campaigns. To capitalize on their
successful ad campaign, Serta, Inc sponsored "The Adopt a Serta
Counting Sheep Contest." The Grand Prize: an eight day, seven
night dream vacation to New Zealand, to the ultimate land of
sheep (there are more sheep there than people). The contest
rules were to write a message to the unemployed sheep either to
the flock as a whole or to an individually numbered sheep and
offer some message of consolation about their plight.
The Serta Sheep became so
popular that the Serta company merchandised cuddly plush sheep
dolls on their internet site (credit card purchase only}. Each
sheep was identified by their own special numbers (#1, 8, 13, 29
& 70). The sheep in the Counting Sheep commercials were filmed
by the Bristol-based Aardman Animations,
the same firm used by
British animator Nick Park who
created the popular stop-action animation characters Wallace
and Gromit in the early 1990s and the prison escape spoof
film Chicken Run.(2000).
