Celebrating the summer of sleep (and sport)

As a brand that champions good sleep, citizenM wanted to launch their annual summer sale with a sporty twist. With the 2024 summer olympics kicking off in Paris, we created a campaign that celebrated the sporting event with the need for truly restful and restorative sleep.

The objective of the PR-led campaign is to leverage a cultural moment (the Olympics), connected to a key trend (sleep tourism) as an opportunity to spotlight citizenM's core product (sleep) – to prove that citizenM is best in class when it comes to sleeping away from home. The campaign creative direction needed to work alongside the science and bring the worlds together in a way that felt consistent to the wider citizenM brand.

  • As Art Director, I co-developed the campaign concept and established the visual direction. I oversaw the project from early creative development and pre-production through to post-production final rollout.

  • The ‘sleep like a champion’ campaign came together thanks to the work and dedication of the citizenM Brand Studio team:

    • Marco Tiverio (photographer)

    • Cleo Fleischer (art direction)

    • Joe Crowther (creative direction)

    • Chelsea Hughes-Monasterio (brand and campaign management)

  • 2 months

The core of the campaign featured four citizens of ' team sleep' that fed directly from citizenM's long term use of 'citizens' to represent our guests: fashion citizen, culture citizen, business citizen and party citizen. Each member of ‘team sleep’ focused on a different sleep persona: the champions of pillow hugging, alarm snoozing, back sleeping and sleeping in.

To tie the elements of the campaign together, we’ve developed a lead video as a hero piece of content, speaking to the sport-like travel journey of our audience and the role that citizenM plays as both a coach and ultimately, a soft landing. The video tells the story of citizenM as a sleep coach at the “sleep championship” - depicting travel as a sport, and guiding a frequent traveller to a great night’s sleep in a citizenM bed.

My art direction for the 'sleep like a champion' campaign stayed true to the core citizenM brand identity. This meant that the overarching colour palette and theme stemmed directly from the core brand colours and all editing and treatment remained true to life and minimal. To further enhance the conditions for good sleep, I utilised the use of elongated, diagonal shadows to create depth, drama, and a sense of "golden hour" lighting.

creative platform

The campaign centred around a dedicated microsite to help guests find their optimal sleep conditions.