Brands
Peps turns 20 and proves great sleep has always been a big idea
MUMBAI:Twenty years on, Peps Industries is still wide awake and so is its imagination. As the spring mattress brand marks two decades in business, it is also celebrating something rarer in the category: advertising that made India laugh, think and finally take sleep seriously.
Since 2005, Peps has steadily rewritten the rulebook on how mattresses are marketed, swapping stiff product claims for storytelling rooted in humour, emotion and everyday insight. At a time when sleep was rarely discussed beyond discounts and density, the brand chose to humanise rest, turning an overlooked household purchase into a conversation about wellbeing.
“Creativity lies at the heart of everything we do,” said Peps Industries managing director G Shankar Ramm. “For 20 years, our mission has been to educate and delight consumers and to show that a mattress isn’t just a product, but a vital part of wellbeing. Our campaigns have helped challenge conventions, shift mindsets and spark smiles along the way.”
One of Peps’ most talked-about recent ideas, Some Breakups Are Necessary, leaned into relationship humour to make a sharp point. Through a trilogy of witty, multilingual films, the campaign urged consumers to finally part ways with old, unsupportive mattresses, framing poor sleep as a bad relationship that had run its course. The message landed because it felt familiar, funny and uncomfortably true.
Earlier this year, the brand doubled down on accessible storytelling with Spring is King, a hyperlocal, humour-led campaign spanning seven short films. Set in everyday Indian households, the series demystified spring mattress technology using playful narratives, bringing concepts such as the Marvellous Middle Advantage and Zero Disturbance Technology to life without sounding technical or preachy.
Seasonal storytelling has also been central to Peps’ playbook. Festive campaigns around Diwali and regional moments such as Onam reinforced the idea that celebration is incomplete without good sleep. By tying comfort to cultural rituals, the brand ensured it stayed relevant beyond sale seasons, building emotional recall throughout the year.
Peps’ creative risk-taking is not new. Among its earlier highlights was BEDTalks, a digital series built around intentionally boring conversations designed to help viewers drift off. The idea stood out precisely because it did the opposite of what advertising usually aims to do, reflecting a brand confident enough to lean into its core promise of better sleep.
Across two decades, Peps has blended science with storytelling, humour with insight, and product innovation with cultural nuance. In doing so, it has elevated mattress advertising from a functional pitch to a human conversation about rest, health and everyday life.
As it enters its third decade, Peps shows no signs of hitting snooze. The brand remains focused on pushing creative boundaries, innovating with purpose and continuing to tell stories that make India sleep and smile, a little better.
Brands
Godrej clarifies ‘GI’ identifier after logo similarity debate
Says GI is not a logo, will not replace Godrej signature across products.
MUMBAI: In a branding storm where shapes did the talking, Godrej is now spelling things out. Godrej Industries Group (GIG) has issued a clarification on its newly introduced ‘GI’ identifier, addressing questions around its purpose and design following a wave of online criticism. At the centre of the debate were two concerns: whether the new mark replaces the long-standing Godrej logo, and whether its geometric design mirrors other corporate identities.
The company has drawn a clear line. The Godrej signature logo, it said, remains unchanged and continues to be the sole logo across all consumer-facing products and services. The ‘GI’ mark, by contrast, is not a logo but a corporate group identifier intended for use alongside the Godrej signature or company name, and aimed at stakeholders such as investors, media and talent rather than consumers.
The need for such a distinction stems from the 2024 restructuring of the broader Godrej Group into two separate business entities. With both continuing to operate under the same Godrej name and signature, the identifier is positioned as a way to differentiate the Godrej Industries Group at a corporate level.
The rollout, however, triggered a broader conversation on design originality. Critics pointed to similarities between the GI mark’s geometric composition and logos used by companies globally, raising questions about distinctiveness.
Responding to this, GIG said its intellectual property and legal review found that such overlaps are common in minimalist, geometry-led design systems. Basic forms such as circles and rectangles appear across dozens of brand identities worldwide, the company noted.
It added that the identifier emerged from an extensive design process and was chosen for its simplicity, allowing it to sit alongside the Godrej signature without competing visually. While acknowledging that elemental shapes may appear less distinctive in isolation, the group emphasised that the mark is part of a broader identity system that includes a custom typeface, sonic branding and other proprietary elements.
Following legal and ethical assessments, the company said it found no impediment to using the identifier, reiterating that the GI mark is a corporate tool not a consumer-facing symbol.
In short, the logo isn’t changing but the conversation around it certainly has.
