UNICEF Finland has launched an ambient album to help people fall asleep to help raise funds for UNICEF’s work for children.
Sleep Aid for UNICEF, created by creative brand studio SEK (part of Grey), is based on a simple premise: press play, fall asleep, do good.
Finns are among Europe’s most sleep-deprived people with insomnia symptoms affecting more than a third of Finnish adults — nearly twice as many as comparable European countries.
It is also a problem in the US, where 38 per cent of adults say scrolling through news and current events before bed makes their sleep worse, according to research by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.At the same time, traditional fundraising is shrinking at a time when children need more help than ever.
UNICEF predicts a 20 percent reduction in all sources of income from 2024 levels for its programs in 2026, fuelled by a global cost of living crisis and the Trump Administration’s dismantling of USAID, which was a large donor.
Ambient music has quietly become one of streaming’s biggest categories. Spotify’s wellness and ambient categories are up 34 per cent in listener engagement, and average listening sessions run approximately 52 minutes, more than double the platform average.
“Donation fatigue is real, but so is sleep deprivation. We weren’t going to solve the first by trying to guilt people or ask them for more attention and clicks. We had to find a behaviour people were already doing, and make it count. Sleep was that behaviour”, says Samuel Räikkönen, creative director at SEK.
SEK and UNICEF wanted to change what pressing play could do.
“We are constantly working towards finding new ways to engage meaningfully with our audiences. This idea tapped into an existing challenge that many of us face every night: we sleep poorly, and how could we sleep well when we know the challenges many children face in the middle of humanitarian crisis, war zones and poverty”, said Laura Helaniemi, marketing and communications director for UNICEF Finland.
Donating in your sleep
Sleep Aid for UNICEF is a sequenced, single-listen album composed specifically to mirror the body’s sleep onset cycle. The album was composed by a group of respected Finnish musicians: it is not a mood playlist, but a scientifically designed musical journey.
Every stream of Sleep Aid on Spotify, Apple Music and other major platforms generates royalties. Those royalties are donated to UNICEF Finland. The longer you listen, the more royalties are generated.
The campaign is being launched in the channels where listening already happens. Paid and earned media is concentrated in audio environments from Spotify to radio.
A group of lifestyle influencers across Finland will introduce the album to their audiences as part of their own bedtime routines.
UNICEF has also partnered with a network of hotels across Finland, where guests are invited to play Sleep Aid for UNICEF as part of the bedtime experience
