The billboards of Parramatta Road, Sydney, sometimes foretell mysterious events: sales, cures and even apocalyptic warnings. For the past two months a man has been staring down from almost every purchasable vantage point in Sydney to advise of the 2014 De Rucci Australasian sleep festival.

The billboard – and what it was pushing – was puzzling. Was it designed for those who could or could not sleep? How could you be both sleep-focused and festive? Would people travel in from New Zealand and beyond? Would the intense-looking man from the billboard be in attendance?

For once, an internet search couldn’t help find the answers – not even about the time and location of the event. It was refreshing to experience a massive advertising campaign that completely bypassed online avenues.

Google pointed to only one precedent, the De Rucci cultural sleep festival held in Ma Hui Furniture Mall in Guangzhou, China, in March 2012. If that was anything to go by, a ribbon would be cut and purple gels would light someone singing on a bed girt by rose petals.

The red carpet at the De Rucci sleep festival

It was a promising vision, if uninformative. Finally, staff at De Rucci’s Camperdown showroom on Parramatta Road (where mattresses and sofas are sold) confirmed that there would be an event and it would be OK if I brought my camera.

I arrived at 10am and there was a red carpet drawing the public up from street level towards tall women in De Rucci sashes, offering branded cupcakes, fruit, pizza and curry puffs.

Inside, a jazz band played to a room full of beds. A crowd of people in blue De Rucci shirts wandered the expansive showroom, inspecting products and watching a PowerPoint presentation on sleep apnoea from a representative of Sleep Centres Australia.

Who is the face of the sleep festival?

It was interactive. In a far corner visitors could opt to be measured by laser and matched to pillows and mattresses. For the duration of the event a stylish Italian man circulated, lending a European flavour to the Chinese mega business.

All this was good but the star of the festival was undoubtedly a brass statue of the man from the billboard. The intensity of the man, too stern to be sleepy, had an obvious impact on the public. It has still not been confirmed by an official source whether he is an actual staff member or an odd choice in stock photography. Some attendees at the festival thought him intimidating, others found him lovable. Few could resist having their picture taken with his likeness.

By midday the people in De Rucci sashes had posed for a wide-angle group photo and been driven away. As the crowds dispersed I met Gordon Dyer on Parramatta Road photographing on his phone and immediately recognised his excitement.

Dyer lives in the affordable housing complex next door to De Rucci. Having been homeless for a number of years, he has not been in a position to browse designer furniture. Most of his own furniture has been found or ingeniously reinvented from things other people left behind.

Some of Gordon Dyer’s friends say he resembles the De Rucci poster boy

He feels a connection to the neighbouring business, however. In 1974 his father bought a VW Kombi from a yard that used to be on the same piece of land. As his apartment overlooks a billboard that rises above an antique market, every morning he awakes to the face looking into his window. Some friends have even said that he looked like the De Rucci man.

“I used to think it wasn’t a particularly nice thing to say. He looks so stern — maybe he is Swiss or something. But perhaps when my hair was a bit longer and I used to have glasses like that ... Now I like him. It’s like a mini-me thing going on.”

He said elsewhere in his building there is a woman who runs a blog on De Rucci sign sightings.

I left the sleep festival as an evangelist with a deepened appreciation for the man and the marketing strategy — but none the wiser about what had just happened.

Originality and mystery are lofty goals for a cultural happening and near miracles for a sales event. The De Rucci Australasian sleep festival was a welcome and exciting addition to the Sydney summer festival circuit.