The Hush Story
Founded in 2017 Hush Blankets emerged with a clear, comforting mission: to revolutionize the way we rest. Founded in 2017 by entrepreneur Aaron Spivak & Lior Ohayon. Canada-based Hush Blankets began its journey with a singular vision—to improve adult sleep through innovative products. At the heart of Hush Blankets' product line is the pioneering Hush Weighted Blanket, a testament to the brand's commitment to enhancing sleep quality.
The brand's approach and dedication to quality have not gone unnoticed. In 2019, Hush Blankets captured the national spotlight on the renowned television show "Dragons' Den," where they received offers from all six dragons.
Hush Blankets' success story is not solely about a single product, they have launched multiple products to help you sleep from pillows to sheets, pajamas and even the mac daddy itself, the Hush Graph Iced Mattress.
Like many DTC brands, a massive contributor to the brands growth has been Facebook and Instagram ads, and now with Meta themselves reporting that 70% of advertising success on the platform is attributed to the creative itself, they needed to level up to unlock their next phase of scale.
Content Challenges before Foreplay
“Before Foreplay our team was all over the place. We had Instagram group chats, slack channels and honestly I don’t think these ad ideas we were collecting went anywhere. Whenever we needed to produce new creative, new ideas were always the sticking point"
Aaron Spivak, Founder, Hush
1. Diversifying the Ad Account from Founder Ads
Founder-story ads always worked extraordinarily well for Hush especially after their appearance on Dragons Den. A blessing an a curse, it was important for Hush to be able to scale the brand more broadly with new messaging to achieve a new level of scale.
2. Paid and Creative Teams Broken Communication
Paid media needs creative teams and creative teams need paid media, unfortunately they don't always talk very harmoniously together. Prior to Foreplay there was a broken communication channel between what media buyers needed and what the creative and social teams were producing.
3. Keeping Influencer Messaging Integrity at Scale
Influencer content and seeding plays a role in the Hush growth plan, but trouble comes when trying to scale these programs to by 10x. Scaling these programs are a double edged sword, you can now leverage endless unique angles and demographics, but Hush also experienced slippage in brand messaging and ethos.
Solutions to Transforming the Content Workflow at Hush
Hush began using Foreplay midway through 2023 and it quickly became a tool that enabled the entire marketing department in their next stage of growth.
“There are very few tools that I personally use, I was the first person on our team to use Foreplay and it has spread like wildfire across the whole marketing department. Even though paid ads and creative aren’t personally what I focus on I still find myself scrolling through discovery or getting inspired by what our internal team is saving.
It’s safe to say that the cliche of “gamechanger” applies - Foreplay has completely changed the way our team works together and I can’t imagine going back to our old ways.”
Aaron Spivak, Founder, Hush
1. Compounding Creative Efforts Across the Whole Marketing Team
Ad formats and styles in DTC are ever-evolving and as teams scale, distributed ideas lead frantic results. Swipe File holds the team’s collective creative library to ensure everyone is moving in the same direction.
Beyond traditional creative research sifting through Facebook Ad Library the Foreplay mobile app allows the team to consistently be staying on-top of trends that are happening in real-time. This has be a pivotal point in diversifying their ad creatives and finding ad creative styles, scripts and formats that rival the performance of their evergreen founder style ads.
The ability to save ads from Instagram natively while they are scrolling socials on their own time means that they can take advantage of any winning concept they see.
2. Reverse Engineering Success with On-Set Moodboards
Hush is constantly producing new creative, from in-studio shoot days to ad-hock sales launch videos in the office. Prior to Foreplay those sessions started with shot lists and were pretty abstract in terms of “what are we actually doing”. The paid teams also found it hard to meaningfully contribute inside of this workflow.
Their process is now flipped on it’s head, they are reverse engineering winning ads. Having a Foreplay board that represents the final output we are striving for means fewer questions and more buy-in across the whole team. Having everyone be able to contribute to the Foreplay board also means that the needs of paid marketing teams are met.
3. On-Brand Influencer Content at Scale
Hush leverages both influencer seeding and sourcing UGC content from influencers. Although a spray-and-pray strategy helps with the volume of content, more often than not the content returned can be missing key product features or messaging nuances that align with the Hush brand.
By using Foreplay Briefs the Hush team can now hit their previous volume, but the content they get back doesn’t need additional revisions and can be used on day one to scale their ad account.
Briefs sent along with the product include content inspiration, key messaging, and their robust brand profile that is home to any asset or detail an influencer might need.
“I hesitate to call Foreplay a part of the company tech stack, it’s not just a tool that helps us do XY or Z, it simply emilimates friction and inspires creativity, more than the features or the UI, I am happiest about how it let’s the humans behind hush do their best work”
Aaron Spivak, Founder, Hush
