February is not just the month for people in love. It’s also a great time for brands and marketers to celebrate love with their customers. Ergo, the advertisement, promotions, campaigns that you will see this month will have a common trait- lovely red and pink colors, roses and heart-shaped icons, and offers for ‘two’.

However, often businesses forget to draw the line when planning the V-day campaign. Being too lovey-dovey may not work in line with your brand image and may bore the customers. Instead do something new. Customers will love you for that. To help you get an idea, we have laid out 7 Valentine’s day marketing Campaigns that made us fall in love with these brands.

New Zealand #goingthedistance

Air travel is commonly linked with reuniting loved ones or families and exploring new places. Therefore, when an airline wants to leverage Valentine Day, it seems natural. On the other hand, for marketers, it becomes a reason to notice and see how now this year?

The national airline of New Zealand, Air New Zealand kicked-off its Valentine’s Day campaign #goingthedistance by posting a 60-second video on its Facebook page that depicted love for different people and relationships, across the globe. From a man on a fishing boat sending a message to a loved one, a father meeting his new-born child, and so on, the video was heart-warming and captured love perfectly. The video ended by the airline telling people that this is a global invitation from them to everyone who’s in love and who they’ll be missing on 14 February.

The beautifully crafted and executed campaign was a success as people shared their stories in the form of over 260 comments on Facebook. It also got 243K Views and 1K reactions on the same platform. The YouTube video got 3,274 views and 35 thumbs up too.

2. Dominos ValenDineIn

Pizza and love have a lot in common. Ergo, the Valentine’s campaign from Dominos UK melted our heart just like cheese in its pizza.

Going by its popular order-in, the pizza company wanted to reward those who dine-in with them on Valentine’s Day or as they say #ValenDineIn Day. The promotion was opened to all its followers and anyone who loved a pizza by just clicking on ‘Going’ to its ValenDine-in Day Facebook event. One lucky couple was then selected and delivered a limited edition ‘Box of Love’ along with the pizza goody-box for two.

The highlight and success of the campaign was Dominos UK not restricting the campaign to only its Facebook UK page, but extending it in different ways to other social platforms. To target Snapchatters, it created a Snap Code that would take them to an exclusive filter in which fans could invite friends to be #ValenDineIn. It also created a Spotify playlist, ‘Valendine-in with Domino’s!’, with the mushiest and the cheesiest love songs like ‘You’re Beautiful’ by James Blunt and Robbie Williams’ ‘She’s the One’ for pizza diners to enjoy.
The company even expected 475,000 ordered throughout the day, making Valentine’s Day its biggest day of 2017. It also predicted over 4.2 million slices of pizza will be eaten that day.

3. Flipkart Gif Delivery

In a hoard of campaigns around Valentine Day, thinking of something that will make the company stand-out often becomes a challenge for marketers. But, a campaign of 2016 that made us say “wow” was of Flipkart, an ecommerce company.

The campaign #FlipkartGIFdelivery was centred around the theme of delivering gifs, not gifts.

The brand designed a number gifs to express love for different relationships. The range had gifs for partners, spouses, BFFs, parents, office friends, and even pets thereby, highlighting ‘there is something for everyone’.

The instant appeal of the GIFs resulted in high engagement, likes, shares and RTs. To add fun, Flipkart showered love on brands like MTV, Olacabs, Red Bull etc. to wish them happy Valentine’s Day.

4. Coles

Sometimes a simple idea that stays true to its core value leaves the outcome that many complex campaigns fail to do. Coles Australia, a well-established and largest supermarkets headquartered out of Melbourne kept its Valentine’s Day campaign uncomplicated, straightforward and yet, effective. The company took to its Facebook business pages to ask followers to vote for their favourite type of bouquet- roses, strawberries, or bacon.
The 10 sec animated post with no complex graphics received over 1.9 million views and 55,000 reactions. Coles continued its engagement with the customers by responding to a large number of the 5,776 comments on the post. This campaign was a complete success, not only from a marketing perspective, but also from the customer care standpoint.

5. Pilot’s Love Guru revived the romance of typed word

In the age of type vs write, a pen company became a love guru. At a time when a text or a WhatsApp message rules the mode of communication, a handwritten note has a more personal relevance than any digital form of writing. Therefore, leveraging its core business, Pilot Pen USA designed their Valentine’s Day campaign by taking the old-fashioned route. They created a hashtag #PilotLoveGuru and asked the participants to–
● Share the name of their crush or Valentine via tweet, tag or share on Pilot Pen’s Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook page
● The #PilotLoveGuru then created personalized and heartfelt handwritten love notes from the messages and send it to their Valentine’s twitter accounts.
The result was a surprised and happy Valentine, where people were showered with love on a public platform and with a message that wasn’t a computer font.

Pilot’s 2013 Love Guru Campaign connected hundreds of people, and its success is evident from the campaign running successfully for four long years i.e. 2013-2017. The brand also says that the #PilotLoveGuru campaign has already played cupid for hundreds of lovers and friends and the brand has seen a 20 percent increase in love messages each year.
Old is gold. And that is what this campaign proved by taking the old-fashioned route and making handwritten notes more heartfelt than a typed message.

Wrap Up

The years gone by have seen some innovative, touching, and downright simple Valentine’s Day campaigns from the likes of pizza makers, pen manufacturers, supermarkets, e-commerce companies, and airlines. These brands have delivered a new image of romance while keeping the core values of their business intact.

If you know of any Valentine Day marketing campaigns that celebrated love without being too cheesy, let us know in the comments below.

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