ZzzQuil is the world's number one-selling sleep aid brand, developed by the trusted sleep experts at Vicks. Available in liquids, LiquiCaps, and melatonin-based gummies and tablets, the brand is built for the occasional sleepless night with one promise: fall asleep fast and wake up refreshed.
GET IN THE MOOD…FOR SLEEP.
Sleepless nights bring a special kind of frustration. Hours of tossing and turning without satisfaction. Talk about anti-climactic foreplay. Thankfully, there's ZzzQuil, ready whenever you're in the mood...for sleep.
That idea became the foundation for a campaign built around young adults who wanted sleep relief without next-day grogginess, leaning into hookup culture to reframe ZzzQuil as something they'd actually want to take home.
AREAS OF FOCUS
360 CAMPAIGN DEVELOPMENT
COPYWRITING
OUT OF HOME
In the cities that never sleep, ZzzQuil showed up where the night was just getting started. Billboards activated exclusively between 1:30 and 3:30 AM, placing the campaign directly in front of urban audiences where the message would hit at the right moment.
Where billboards caught the late-night crowd, print went after everyone else. "Clothing Optional" ran in lifestyle magazines, while "The Perfect Threesome" found its home in subway and transit placements, giving commuters something worth a second look. Bus stop placements used the missed-text-message advertisement, capturing the one thing better than a late-night hookup: a full night of uninterrupted sleep.
DIGITAL EXTENSION
For the audience still awake and restless at 3:00 AM, ZzzQuil offered an alternative to the endless scroll. The Sleep Hotline is active nightly from 1:30 to 3:30 AM, providing late-night callers with access to an ASMR bedtime story designed to help them fall asleep. Developed in partnership with audio erotica platform Quinn, the content walked the same line as the print campaign: intimate enough to feel personal, soothing enough to actually work.
Paid social ads targeted late-night scrollers, driving them directly from their feeds to the phone line.
APP INTEGRATION
Where the campaign's audience was already spending their late nights, ZzzQuil showed up uninvited and completely in character. Fictional dating profiles for Zzzach and Zzzoe were created for Hinge, each of their photos featuring a bottle of ZzzQuil and every line of copy written in double entendre.
Users who swiped right received a message that gradually revealed the misdirect, ending with a recommendation to try ZzzQuil instead. The profiles didn't feel like an ad. They felt like a match.
BRAND PARTNERSHIP
To round out the campaign with something tangible, ZzzQuil partnered with Blissy to create a limited-edition sleep kit designed to complete the night. Packaged with the campaign's signature tone, the set brought together a silk sleep mask, a silk pillowcase, and a bottle of ZzzQuil under one promise: everything you need for satisfaction.
Available directly to consumers and through select retail partners, the kit turned the campaign concept into something people could actually take home.
COPYWRITING: MICHELLE DAMATO, CLAIRE ANDERSON, GRAHAM GOLDSTEIN
ART DESIGN: GWEN HOTALING