The weeks building up to Valentine’s Day are a marketing company’s dream. With love and romance the order of the day, the top companies battle it out in the marketing world to get their brand on top. While chocolates and roses are a little cliche, the internet has given rise to some creative marketing campaigns. Check out the best ones of 2012 here.
Top Five Valentine’s Day Campaigns of 2012 and 2013
5. Innocent Smoothies – Create your own Innocent Valentine’s smoothie
Social networking has allowed companies to go for some very customer participation-oriented marketing campaigns, and Innocent were no exception.The nation’s favourite smoothie company encouraged customers to personalise their own labels for their significant other’s favourite drink. They could then wrap them up and ”leave it on the doorstep of the one you love”.
4. Google – Valentine’s Day Doodle
Search engine colossus Google released a short animated film which played when the user clicked on a picture of a Valentine’s Day card on the homepage. The film told the story of a boy trying to win the heart of a girl. Simple, heart-warming and life-affirming, the film also redirects users to various related links afterwards.
3. Marks & Spencer – Augmented Reality
Marks & Spencer tapped into the last-minute gift market with its first augmented reality billboard outside Waterloo Station. After holding an enabled tablet or phone over the billboard, the advert’s model then suggested ideas from M&S’s lingerie or flower ranges. Move over QR codes, there’s a new kid in town…
2. Field Notes – Red Blooded
Small notebook company Field Notes produced this short but sweet video, detailing a husband’s love for his wife. Simple but effective, the pages spring to life with charming and funny pop-up pictures. The video is a great balance between advertising the product and telling a wonderful story.
1. Times Square Alliance – City Pulse
For the last four years, Times Square Alliance have commissioned an artist to produce a giant heart sculpture to take pride of place in Times Square on Valentine’s Day. Lighting up the Square in February 2012 was a giant beating heart. The 10-foot installation was made of 400 transparent acrylic LED tubes around a suspended heart. The heart beat when it was touched. Kissing or holding hands made the heart beat faster in a celebration of love. BIG, the architectural company responsible said it represented what Times Square was famous for: people and light.
2013 Campaigns
As Valentine’s Day rolls on again, we can be sure to expect some more creative marketing campaigns from all sorts of companies.
Ann Summers – Love or Lust
The first ever Valentine’s TV advert for Ann Summers was celebrated by projecting the advert in various London locations. It was first projected onto a wall at Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush, before moving on to the National Portrait Gallery. The advert finished up in Covent Garden and around the Royal Opera House.
Friends Reunited – Scents of a Decade
Social networking site Friends Reunited recently launched a range of perfumes and marketed it through a Facebook campaign. The fragrances are aimed at igniting people’s nostalgia of past decades, the 70s, 80s and 90s, and bottles of the scents are being given away in a competition on the company’s Facebook page.
Scribbler – Valentine’s Day Competition
Quirky greetings card company Scribbler have launched a Valentine’s Day competition on their blog. They are inviting people to come up with phrases that begin “love is…” and are offering an iPad Mini as a prize for the best one. After looking at the submissions from their site and through Twitter, they will compile the best, worst and funniest answers into an ebook.
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