“Going into the shoot, we had no idea what we were going to capture,” said Rethink creative director Geoff Baillie. That uncertainty is what makes “Sleep Talk Reviews” such a refreshing campaign for Ikea Canada.
Instead of scripted testimonials, the team let sleep talkers do the reviewing—unfiltered, surreal, and often hilarious. It’s an idea that gives you butterflies before the shoot because it could be either brilliant or an epic fail.
Credit to Ikea’s Jonelle Ricketts for leaning into that risk. Her mantra, “Don’t be afraid to be bad at something new,” is stamped across the work. Vulnerability, trust, and curiosity created the space for an idea that feels both strange and human.
Of course, big ideas invite second-guessing. My question was, “Are sleep talkers restless, and doesn’t that undercut the promise of deep sleep?” AI quipped when I raised the question, “Well, if you want to nitpick the idea.”
And that’s the point: Too often we strangle originality by nitpicking it to death. Perhaps, we should pay more attention to that first human emotion of surprise and delight.
The campaign launched around the same time as Gut Toronto’s “This Is Perfect Sleep” for Casper. Both are strong, but when it comes to surprise, Ikea takes the edge. It’s riskier, stranger, and ultimately more memorable.
Casper, though, wins on scale—its work rolled out nationally across TV, OOH, and social, with extended flighting into September. By contrast, “Sleep Talk Reviews” has so far been treated as a regional stunt: buzzy in PR, narrow in paid reach.
And that raises a broader industry question. Why do we so often invest heavily in safe work while leaving our most original ideas to fend for themselves in earned media? Imagine if Ikea put the same paid commitment behind this campaign as Casper did. The economic impact could be exponentially bigger.
As for the production itself, one lingering question remains: How did the crew manage not to laugh or breathe a sigh of relief when someone mumbled, “I want to forgive the dolphin,” or “toilet paper, who cares”? That might have been the toughest job of all.
