Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Serta Simmons Commits $100M to Boost Production, Marketing
February 14,
2017 by Larry Thomas in Bedding, Business Strategy, Industry, Product 
Serta Simmons Bedding, the nation’s biggest mattress producer, said it is making a multi-year investment of more than $100 million to expand production capacity and boost its marketing efforts.
The new adverting program, called Advantage Marketing Program, features an aggressive national adverting campaign by the company and a co-op advertising program with retailers with a dollar-for-dollar match.
The expansion of manufacturing capacity will see the company open four new factories in 2017 in areas where product demand has been the greatest, the company said.
New factories are planned for Windsor Locks, Conn., Seattle, Houston and Moreno Valley, Calif. In each instance, the company is renovating an existing building with state-of-the-art equipment and intends to begin production before the end of the year.
The new advertising effort was kicked off in January with a multimillion-dollar media buy that included print advertisements in lifestyle, business and general interest publications, as well as airtime on local radio networks. The campaign included eight-page spreads in Time and Fortune magazines.
To date, the company said the program has generated 1.4 billion impressions for the Serta and Simmons Beautyrest brands.
“In addition to making significant product portfolio investments in our market-leading Serta and Beautyrest brands, we are excited about engaging our participating retail partners in a new way to capture consumer attention in their specific markets, matching their advertising investments on a dollar-for-dollar basis,” said Michael Traub, CEO of Serta Simmons Bedding.
He said the program offers retailers more depth and breadth across all facets of their marketing efforts.
“SSB is committed to helping our strong network of independent retailers grow, and this program gives us a way to further support their success,” said Traub. “We have seen a great response from our partners thus far and are proud to help them amplify their advertising efforts that connect with consumers and drive traffic into their stores.”
Retailers can sign up in specific locations or by store, which means that large retailers with multiple locations who join the program have the opportunity to significantly increase their awareness in target markets.
“It can be difficult for independent retailers to gauge whether ads are reaching target customers or if a creative message is effective,” said Traub. “Through this program, we are investing alongside our retailers, and we are also providing access to market research and promotional strategies that are typically reserved for companies making substantial national ad buys.”
In addition to the Advantage Marketing Program, the company said Serta and Simmons are individually promoting their brands this year with national advertising campaigns featuring Serta’s Counting Sheep and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who will again be seen in Simmons Beautyrest commercials.