The worst thing about mornings is waking up, but Philips helps mankind deal with it. Last year, the domestic appliances manufacturer launched the hilarious ‘Wake up the Town’ project, a one-of-a-kind experiment which took place in Longyearbyen, Norway, the world’s northern-most settlement with a population over 2,000, where sun doesn’t rise for about four months each year. There, the brand was testing its Wake-up Light, gadget, an alarm-clock, which uses light, not the usual annoying sounds to help people shake off drowsiness in the morning—it was a tough challenge regarding the fact that in the town the polar night lasts from October till February. The residents of the town received the gadget to use it during the dark period and when the long night was over, they provided their feed-back. After six weeks of the experiment, 87% of respondents said they “were waking up feeling more refreshed, alert and ready for the day,” so Wake-up Light proved its effectiveness in extreme conditions (see the report here), but will it help people in countries where sun doesn’t disappear for longer than 12 hours?

Photo: Wake-up Light section in the new Facebook app

Philips teamed up with Tribal DDB, the agency behind the last year’s Arctic campaign, One Voice, Carat and IRIS to create an initiative for social-media savvy users, encouraging them to test how easily they wake up in the morning. The initiative is running on the Philips’ Facebook page, where users can figure out what morning types they are—The Grump, The Grunter, The Snoozer, The Zombie, The Corpse, The Early Bird or The Chirpy—by taking the Morning Person Quiz. People who find it hard to wake up in the mornings can also sign up for the 21-day experiment (now, users can fill in the online application, providing brief description of how they feel in the morning), and then Philips will chose the lucky who will receive Philips Wake-up Light and take part in the experiment, which starts in mid-October.

Participants will be tracking the progress “via the dedicated iPhone ‘Wake-app’ that has mini-games to test them on alertness, mood and ease of getting out of bed, and will determine whether a ‘non morning person’ has truly become a ‘morning person’ by waking up naturally with the Philips Wake-up Light,” says Tribal DDB blog. It’s also said that that the “Wake-app is the first consumer-facing app to feature tests undertaken in sleep laboratories and clinical studies”—it will be available to download by non-participants as well. Philips Facebook fan-page visitors will also be able to monitor the progress of the participants, using filters by sex, age and morning types. In November, the brand will announce the result of this study and promote them on a range of platforms.

“We have devised a strategy as part of the ‘Make me a morning person’ campaign whereby we tap into existing online conversations about how people’s wake-up experience impacts their day and that of those around them. The conversation about bad mornings is an ongoing one that we amplify and make go viral with exciting and entertaining content, giving our audience the opportunity to talk and share things about themselves. By creating an exciting visual style and continuing to deliver engaging content, we keep the challenge fresh, edgy and relevant—and offline through PR, seeding and viral effects. And all this will be happening at a time when the encroaching darkness is making waking up even more of a challenge,” commented Chris Bayliss, Executive Creative Director of Tribal DDB Amsterdam.