Valentine’s Day prompts more consumer spending than any other holiday bar Christmas. No wonder companies invest huge amounts of money in getting their annual marketing strategy just right. In honor of the big day, we’ve trawled the web to bring you three campaigns that get our hearts all a-flutter…
Scribbler
In 2013, UK greeting card firm Scribbler launched a brilliant user-generated content campaign. They asked their audience to share definitions of ‘love’ on their blog, with the response deemed the best winning an iPad mini. The runners-up were compiled into a special Valentine’s Day e-book.
It was a winning campaign for a number of reasons. It’s a classic example of ‘joined up’ marketing: the campaign was announced on the company blog and directed participants to submit their definitions of love to Twitter; the best responses were posted on Facebook. As a lead gen tactic, it takes some beating. It was also a good example of crowdsourced content, which engages the audience more effectively than passively-consumed content as well as alleviating the burden on in-house resources, freeing the creatives up to come up with more innovative ideas. Low brand commitment and high user engagement = result.
Orange
More British innovation from mobile network Orange who, in 2011, launched a multi-platform, interactive animation campaign for Valentine’s Day. Another good example of crowdsourcing, the project asked for ‘how-we-met’ stories from couples - and turned the winning entry into a short cartoon.
Again, one of the requirements of the campaign was to engage via Twitter. Applicants had to fit their stories into the 160-character limit. Orange’s marketing reach was further extended by posting the winning entries on their YouTube channel. Orange drove more traffic to their channel, and the winners loved it - after all, what better Valentine’s gift than your very own animated film?
Ikea
Mobile coupons were a well known marketing tactic in 2013, which is one of the reasons why Ikea’s Australian campaign for that year - a traditional cut-out print coupon - was so brilliantly off the wall. The main reason was the idea itself: a free crib for babies born on November 14, exactly nine months after Valentine’s Day. With so much fluff around at this time of year, Ikea pulled off a masterstroke by generating a marketing campaign that became a talking point even among people with no plans to, er, ‘take part.’
There’s no information on whether or not Ikea’s concept resulted in any conceptions, but anyone who saw the ad didn’t forget it in a hurry. A classic example of keeping - and in fact starting - a brand conversation offline.
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