How Shannen Doherty's Bizarrely Intense Mattress Ad Shows the Power of YouTube
Here's how interesting web video can be for advertisers: Shannen Doherty (still best-known for playing Brenda in Beverly Hills 90210) is currently starring in a jarringly emotional video for -- wait for it -- the Better Sleep Council, a mattress lobby group. Weird, yes, but that's the point: The web offers advertisers with small budgets the chance to attract massive audiences by doing something completely off the wall.
In "Suite 7," Doherty plays an insomniac trapped in a hotel who summons room service at 4 a.m. Her performance is so real it's almost embarrassing to watch. As a hotel delivery guy tries to appease her, Doherty spirals into a despairing riff on the nature of loneliness:
Do you know when I get lonely? ... I feel alone when I realize that no one knows I feel alone.The BSC says Suite 7 was "created to heighten awareness of the important role proper sleep plays in health and well-being and the role a new mattress plays," but it's Doherty's heartaching performance -- real tears in what is essentially an infomercial! -- that is getting all the attention.
The video is part of a series in which the recurring "star" is the mattress in Suite 7. On paper, that's one of the least interesting advertising ideas you could hope to see, but the the Better Sleep Council -- "a division of the International Sleep Products Association," I kid you not -- appears to have given ad agency CJP Digital Media permission to go hog wild.
Other episodes in the series feature Illeana Douglas, Milo Ventimiglia and Doherty's former 90210 costar Brian Austin Green. They seem to be having a ball -- and delivering performances of a far higher quality than they have often done on regular TV.
Whether it will sell any mattresses, of course, is anyone's guess. Given that the cost of shooting the series was obviously minimal (set: 1 hotel room) and the client's media expenses were $0 (it's all on YouTube), the BSC's members only need to move a few thousand mattresses to get their money back.
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