Sleep Country Canada has tapped Eugene Levy to help Canadians repair their rocky relationship with rest.

The Schitt’s Creek and Best In Show star is taking on the recurring role of “Sleep Daddy” in a new integrated campaign created by Publicis Canada that the sleep retailer will be rolling out through 2025.

While declining to give dollar figures, Nuno Bamberg, Sleep Country Canada’s SVP of brand and marketing, tells strategy that the scope of the “Sleep Daddy” campaign stretches from brand to event marketing and represents the company’s largest spend in 30 years.

“The notion was, what if Canada’s sleep brand had this ambassador that could nudge Canadians in a relatable, human way about the importance of taking your sleep relationship seriously, but not from the soapbox … we wanted to do it in a way that was fun and with levity,” Bamberg says. “When the agency first came up with the idea, they had presented Eugene as a persona. What happens in these pitches is, it’s always, ‘What if we could find someone like Eugene?’ And then at that point, we said, ‘Well, we only do it if it is Eugene.'”

Levy becomes the first “face of the brand” since Sleep Country co-founder and president Christine Magee took a step back from day to day advertising activity in 2015 and marks the highest-profile celebrity integration in Sleep Country’s history, Bamberg says.

Launched Monday, the 15- and 30-second “Sleep Daddy” spots will run on TV, connected TV and OLV alongside supplemental digital and social extensions, connected audio, digital audio and experiential components. Kingstar Media is handling the media buy and North Strategic is working on PR.

Sleep Country is looking to expand its reach beyond Baby Boomers and Gen X audiences to attract “older millennials” after connecting with the demographic in March’s “Stop Sleep Shaming” campaign, which also leaned into humour. Key digital media investments will target late-night scrollers that might be open to the brand’s sleep-health messaging, Bamberg says.

The new campaign is informed by a Sleep Country and Leger poll of 1,619 Canadian adults conducted last month in which 69% of respondents said they wished they were getting better-quality nighttime rest. The survey also found that only 26% of participants reported getting the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep and that 65% get six hours or less.

“We started with, how do you make consumers care that sleep, when well-treated, when invested in, can be an incredible, powerful source to help you become the best version of yourself,” Bamberg says. “So that’s really what the campaign started with and Eugene was just a perfect person to do it.”