In today’s episode, we’re joined by George Davis, CMO at Cozy Earth, to talk about their viral social challenge - the Cozy Earth Bed Rot Challenge.

George shares the story behind the challenge and how it started as a little MVP test in season one with five employees and a $1k prize, and how it grew into season two with a 24/7 livestream, 50M+ impressions and 15k emails collected. We dig into what worked, where the limits were, the brand’s goal of building cultural relevance over direct sales, and how marketing plays of this size stack up against running ads. We also get into the importance of taking big swings and risks, and George shares how brand partnerships and a refined strategy are shaping plans for season three.

From there, we dive into incrementality — one of the trickiest parts of performance marketing. We talk through channel holdouts, overlapping signals, directional insights, negative incremental ROAS, long-term readouts, and why the numbers don’t always tell the full story.

To hear more of our thoughts as the Cozy Earth Bed Rot Challenge played out, listen to: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6z40HWMVQoBFOBY0Xk6S7v?si=1CoayJh-TkaMi2gsylIyZA

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Chapters:

00:00:44 Introduction

05:09:17 What is the Bed Rot Challenge?

18:28:47 Brand Building vs. Driving Direct Revenue

33:24:55 The Risk of Failure

44:03:84 Deep Dive on Incrementality

54:37:06 The Case for Longer Holdout Tests

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