Valentine’s: ten brands show how it’s done
Author: CIM COM
It’s Valentine’s Day on 14 February. Burberry, Tesco, Spotify and other top brands have been sharing the love. These past and present campaigns are favourites of the CIM Creative Communications Group. With a mix of innovation, romance and humour there’s a wealth of ideas to inspire your own creative marketing around Valentine’s Day.
1. Burberry sends kisses around the world
Burberry created a social media campaign, #BurberryKisses, to drive engagement with millennials and coincide with the relaunch of the Burberry beauty brand. The rationale was to familiarise young consumers with Burberry and create a new generation that had an emotional connection to the Burberry brand. While tracking uptake of the initiative, the team were surprised to see a huge response in Brazil. Upon discovering that it was their Valentine’s Day, the enthusiasm of the Brazilian public made perfect sense.
Watch the campaign video Introducing Burberry Kisses
Created by Burberry, Google and Grow, the campaign engaged with consumers in 215 countries within a week.
Google explain the premise for the creative: “Burberry Kisses is a digital experience that explores the universal theme of love, communicated in the most personal way possible: a kiss.”
The campaign used open web technologies to capture kisses and then visualise the sending of that kiss (and love letter message) around the world. With desktop users, for example, a mix of lip detection, image processing, colour and blob recognition were used to capture kisses via webcam. WebGL was used to plot the kisses journey, with Google Earth, Street View, Google Places and Sketchup being used to add authenticity with inspiring images of the sender and receiver’s city.
People spent over three minutes on average engaged with the tool and sent kisses to 13,000 cities. The campaign was widely reported across the women’s lifestyle press and digital trade media.
Learn more about the rationale for the campaign with this video.
Google's Art, Copy & Code: Behind the Burberry Kisses Campaign & Impact
2. Tesco find soulmates by matching baskets
Tesco experiment at creating love matches just based on the contents of singles’ shopping baskets. It’s an intriguing idea, and this PR move comes complete with an enthusiastic psychology expert: Tesco Valentine's | Introducing Basket Dating.
3. Spotify pops the question
Spotify’s internal creative team analysed its data to create Out of Home Billboards that acknowledged listener choices. Topics are attention-grabbing. This is consumer insight cleverly put to work to build the brand. One of Spotify’s billboards read:
Dear person who played ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentine’s Day…what did you do?
4. NHS Organ Donations make you cringe
NHS Organs Donation makes the point that some things are better left unsaid, while your intention to be an organ donor should be shared with your nearest and dearest this Valentine’s. This is a great example of creating relevance by piggybacking on an annual event which is high in the public consciousness. See the ad created with the Aesop Agency: #Sharethelove
5. Nivea hugs with a twist
Research from Nivea has revealed that hugs make us happy. Didn’t we know that already? Nivea then acted upon the research to take the power of the humble hug a step further, by using nanotechnology to send a virtual sensory hug across the world.
Created with Leo Burnett, the Second Skin Project was developed to investigate the importance of the human touch. The subjects for the experiment were a mother in Spain and her son in Paraguay, separated by thousands of miles. The occasion was Christmas, but this campaign fits with our Valentine’s theme of sharing a little love. Advanced material and sensors were donned to emulate skin and transmit the feeling of touch from one person to another.
The mother and son’s reactions clearly show the importance of the human touch. But all is not as it seems.
See for yourself: "Second Skin Project" de NIVEA Creme.
The hugs concept continues to work for Nivea who are currently running a #HugStory
competition to collect consumers’ stories of their most memorable hug.
Video: Protection and Care in each hug!
6. Hermès share handshakes
Not everyone is comfortable with hugging and kissing. Luxury goods brand Hermes instead focuses on shaking hands to showcase its gloves collection with #Hermesshake. In a typically playful Hermès execution, you only get to see the protagonists gloved hands within the frame. A series of humorously executed alternative handshakes are demonstrated and include the French Handshake, the Low Five and the Bel-air.
Video: Hermès Shake - Gloves Collection 2014
7. Innocent creates love labels
Innocent decided that its drinks were as good as flowers for a Valentine’s Day gift, so it enabled customers to create and print messages of love to attach as bottle labels. As well as encouraging people to declare their love with a smoothie gift, the Innocent labels were created to be shareable on Facebook and Twitter. See the web page.
8. Cartier lives for romance
Cartier created this ad which intertwines three love stories. Each is a marriage proposal, complete with diamond encrusted engagement ring. Expect high quality production values with this creative treatment.
Cartier - The Proposal
9. Doritos make a delicious bouquet
Doritos in Canada decided that the best expression of love would be to get a bunch of Doritos ketchup flavoured roses for the man it their life. This PR stunt fits well with the fun-loving Doritos brand. The YouTube ad is accompanied by this message: “Yes. They’re real! 12 beautiful long stem Doritos® Ketchup Roses. Handmade and hand-delivered to your special dude this Valentine’s Day.” See Doritos® Ketchup Roses.
10. WestJet gets involved in marriage proposals
Low-cost Canadian airline company, WestJet, got involved in marriage proposals. The brand visited a jeweller and when two separate men bought engagement rings, they were each offered each a dream trip to Barbados so they could propose to their respective partners in style. Organised in conjunction with the Barbados Tourist Board, the Caribbean island made the ideal place to propose – the only catch was that WestJet got to decide when, during the holiday, that would be. If you like suspense, you’ll appreciate this!
See: #WestJetLove Valentine’s Day proposals in Barbados