The One Show
The One Show is the world's most prestigious award show in advertising and design. For over 50 years, the Gold Pencil has been regarded as one of the top prizes in the creative industry. The One Show has a rich legacy of honoring some of the most groundbreaking ideas, created by some of the most remarkable minds in creativity.
Learn more about The One Show 2026
Category
Custom Content
Annual ID
OS25_RA022M
Background
Business travel is not fun. Harvard Business Review reports that 75% of business travellers suffer from stress and lack of sleep. City Lodge Hotels, one of South Africa's largest hotel groups, has a specific focus on the business travel market. It is a hotly contested space, where brands offer very similar facilities and services - it's become really hard to stand out. So we knew that, to build loyalty for City Lodge Hotels among stressed-out business travellers, we would really need to innovate.
Creative Idea
We realised that while every other hotel offers wake-up calls, no one puts their guests to sleep properly in the first place. So, to help them relax and get some much-needed sleep, we created Bedtime Stories for Business People - a playful playlist of misguided meditations, inspired by the world of relaxation, meditation and calmness. We identified eight kinds of business traveller and wrote a unique bedtime story for each of them - Boss, HR Manager, Intern, IT Technician, Sales Rep, Middle Manager, Conference Speaker and of course the idiot from Procurement. Sleepless customers could pick the most appropriate piece from the playlist and were rewarded by being guided through a hilarious, relevant, and yet somehow still incredibly relaxing meditative journey to send them off to sleep.
Insights & Strategy
The business world has a unique vocabulary all of its own. There's an absolute abundance of corporate jargon, unnecessary acronyms and motivational gibberish that is simply begging to made fun of. We realised that to truly connect with this corporate audience, we'd have to speak this strange language, be honest about the world they live in and tell it like it is for once, without holding back. In stark contrast to the corporate hustle culture, meditation and self-care are experiencing wide-spread popularity on apps like Calm and Headspace that provide guided meditations and sleep aids. So we found an opportunity in City Lodge (a brand known for their humour) and their new positioning of, “Check into easy” that welcomes any work that helps facilitate an easier escape for customers from the chaos of everyday life. After the stresses of Covid, and with the fiercely contested national elections looming ominously, stress levels were at an all-time high. Which meant it was the perfect time for a tongue-in-cheek, relaxing campaign like this, designed to resonate with people in the business world, at every level from interns all the way up to CEOs.
Execution
We found and crafted an appropriate soothing track to guide the listener through each piece, and directed a truly calming, hypnotic voice over that brought out not just the tone, but also the humour in each spot. With audio matching the wellness and meditation world, each meditation was written specifically for each character based on their insights and nuances, with some common jabs for the poor person in procurement. The full stories were hosted on a microsite (bedtimestories.co.za) that our in-room hotel guests could access via a QR Code featured on our in-room collateral. We made beautiful bespoke animations to match the calming effect of the audio, and filmed real-life caricatures of each traveller to bring the campaign to life. Using these visual aids and cut-downs of the spots, we were able to amplify the campaign on social, especially all the optimistic insomniac business people on LinkedIn.
Results
At last count, the campaign had generated 28,131,044 Total Impressions, with a Total Reach of 14,838,215. Total Engagement was 472,593 and Total Click-throughs equalled 171,684. In terms of ROI, for every $1 spent we earned a return of $257 (Ratio = 257.31 : 1). Online searches were up 237% during the campaign period.
2025 Awards
Total Points: 3
Merit
Credits
Agency
TBWA Hunt Lascaris / Johannesburg
Post Production Company
Sterling Sound / Johannesburg
Art Director
Shane Forbes
Chief Creative Officer
Carl Willoughby
Copywriter
Paula Andropoulos
Design Director
Sacha Traest
Designer
Sydney Rheeder
Executive Creative Director
George Low
Shane Forbes
Steph Van Niekerk
Sound Designer
Lorens Persson
Senior Copywriter
George Low
Greg Lavagna
Senior Producer
Kim Hunt
UX Designer
Sydney Rheeder
Account Executive
Rohma Hassan
Business Director
Cretienne Uys
Debbie Laing
Devloper
Max Sibanda
Group Account Director
Alet van Jaarsveld
Performance
Brendan Jack
Project Manager
Leanne Ferris-Wods
Natalie Bawa
Related Awards
