The world of video games is a curious place, as you almost never know what’s going to happen with it at any given moment. Case in point: unless you’re using the app regularly, you might not have thought about Pokemon Sleep in a while. The mobile title is one where your sleep gauges how many Pokemon you “catch.” The “goal” is to use the lure of catching Pokemon to get better sleep. It’s one of those projects that sounds really weird, and yet you honestly want to try it for yourself to see how well it works. It turns out that The Pokemon Company isn’t afraid to bring in certain stars to help promote it.
As you’ll see below, the company decided to bring in known anime fan Dua Lipa to help them with a commercial for the game. In it, we hear one of Dua Lipa’s songs in the background as a bunch of people attempt to find their “sleep style.” The joke is that this can help determine the kind of Pokemon they’ll get in the “Wilds of their sleep.” It’s a clever way of getting the message across, and fans of Dua Lipa will listen to this commercial just to hear Dua Lipa. After all, she is quite popular.
While you might expect us to joke about this “unique crossover,” it’s actually not something uncommon for The Pokemon Company. You might recall that when they did the 25th-anniversary celebration of the franchise, they did a bunch of crossovers with musical artists. They did work with Katy Perry, Post Malone, and more. In the case of Katy Perry, she did a music video for one of her songs that featured her “growing up” with a Pikachu as her Pokemon partner.
Later on, during the release of Gen IX, Ed Sheeran got to share his love of the franchise by making a song that was not only featured in the game, but the music video featured him enjoying his life with Pokemon as a whole, including him getting fully animated at one point alongside his Pokemon team.
So, while it may seem weird that this happened for Pokemon Sleep, of all things, it’s hardly out of the ordinary. What you need to remember is that this franchise has been around for almost 30 years now, and that means there are all sorts of people both then and now who have been enamored with various Pokemon across nine generations and are up for showing appreciation for it.
Thus, we could see more commercials like this in the future.