UNICEF Finland and SEK turn sleep into a new form of giving with ambient album initiative

Creative brand studio SEK (part of Grey) and UNICEF Finland today launch Sleep Aid for UNICEF, an ambient album designed to help people fall asleep, with streaming royalties going to UNICEF’s work for children. The premise is simple: press play, fall asleep, do good.

Finns are among Europe’s most sleep-deprived populations. Research shows that insomnia symptoms affect more than a third of Finnish adults: insomnia diagnoses are 1.5–2 times more prevalent in Finland than in comparable European countries. The trend is similar globally: a 2025 survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that 38% of U.S. adults say scrolling through news and current events before bed makes their sleep worse.

At the same time, traditional fundraising is shrinking at a time when children need more help than ever. The global funding crises causes a severe threat to children’s survival, protection and education. UNICEF projects at least a 20 percent reduction in all sources of income from 2024 levels for UNICEF’s humanitarian, development and child rights programs in 2026.

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Meanwhile, ambient music has quietly become one of streaming’s biggest categories. Spotify’s wellness and ambient categories are up 34% in listener engagement, and average listening sessions run approximately 52 minutes, more than double the platform average. People are already pressing play.

“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 simply to change what pressing play could do.

“Fundraising has been stuck in the same emotional register for decades. We wanted to build something useful first, generous second. If the album helps you sleep, you’ll come back to it tomorrow night, and the night after. The donation compounds because the product actually works”, says Annu Terho, Creative Director at SEK.

“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”, says 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.

Each track is built around 55 BPM tempo. Across studies, listening to music has consistently been shown to reduce sleep-onset latency, improve sleep efficiency and increase total sleep time, with slow-tempo, soft, instrumental and structurally simple music being the most effective. At this tempo, heart rate and breathing begin to slow to match, the parasympathetic nervous system activates, cortisol drops, and the body shifts into the relaxation state that precedes sleep onset.

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.

A media plan built for the ear, not the eye

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 curated group of lifestyle influencers across Finland will introduce the album to their audiences as part of their own bedtime routines. The influencer brief is built around honest demonstration rather than scripted endorsement: play it, sleep through it, talk about it the next morning.

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. In-room cards and TV welcome screens prompt guests to press play. For travelling guests, the album is another nice hotel amenity as well as a chance to donate while asleep.