Did you know that the ideal time to replace your pillow is every 1-2 years?
It’s not just for hygiene reasons. Your pillow apparently plays an important role in maintaining proper spinal alignment while you sleep.
But what happens to all the old pillows? In a time where we’re encouraged to reuse, recycle or reduce our waste, it’s difficult for consumers to know the right thing to do.
And it’s tough for brands too. Particularly in the hospitality industry where there are high standards and expectations for fresh and crisp bedding.
The Premier Inn, the UK’s largest hotel chain is retiring up to 400,000 pillows and replacing them with new ones in over 800 hotels. The company plans to recycle them, but before the old pillows are put to pasture, they were thrown back into the ring for one last hurrah.
Like something out of a Hollywood movie, Premier Inn launched the Pillow Fight Club – a series of fun pop-up events across the UK. Hosted in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Bristol, families of all ages could jump into a boxing-style ring to battle it out to become the ultimate champion for their region.
And for those not wanting to step into battle, there was a giant pillow wall for people to take selfies against. To enhance the experience, guests could also take home one of the Premier Inn’s new ‘best ever pillows’.
To launch the campaign, the brand created an adorable video, that mimicked the 1999 cult movie, Fight Club, but with children dressed as the characters and re-enacting scenes from the hit film.
The first rule of Fight Club was that attendants were not allowed to talk about Fight Club. And while it’s the opening line of the amusing video, Premier Inn certainly wanted people to spread the word, using #PillowFightClub on social media.
Sarah Simpson, Head of Product at Premier Inn said “Pillow fights are one of the few childhood ‘sports’ people can take through to adulthood and still be good at. Because of this, we thought Pillow Fight Club would be the perfect way to use leftover pillows before they’re recycled and bring families together to have some fun.”
The event secured national press coverage and offered up a clever way to engage with the public, in turn raising awareness of the brand new pillows, while building brand love through an exciting and highly-memorable brand activation.
We love seeing these highly-engaging pop-up events from hotel brands, like the Howard Johnson Sweet Escape room and the Sandcastle Hotel from Booking.com.