This is one for the romantics – hopeless or not. Love is in the air as Valentine’s Day comes back around, and with it, a fawning line-up that is yearning for your love and affection. No, we’re not talking about your local eligible bachelors or dodgy Tinder dates. Instead, we are taking a look at the greatest love stories ever sold. These are the campaigns that hit you with Cupids Arrow, so you fall head over heels for what these brands are selling. Call us lovestruck, but these are our favourite Valentine’s campaigns from over the years. Get the chocolates out, open up a nice bottle of wine, and dive right in.
Valentine’s Day, the most romantic day of the year, a day to show how much you care and shower your loved ones with affection. Well thought out and elaborate plans to communicate your true feelings with the perfect special recipe or a dinner date at the most popular and hard to get restaurant to prove to your better half that there is a reason they have stuck with you. But sometimes, you just want a steak bake. Why go through all the trouble and stress (and expense) of securing the most sought-after date location or tricky to master cherished recipe when £15 can secure you a four-course set meal and a bottle of Prosecco at the UK’s favourite bakery, Greggs. Select stores across the UK opened their doors on Valentine’s Day for the ultimate pastry filled candlelit dinner experience. Sometimes the best way to say I love you is with a pork puff pastry slider. Got any more reservations for this year, lads?
Here’s to those who spend Valentine’s Day single. Relegated to the backbenches of the marketplace, there aren’t too many brands who want to put them at the focus of their Valentine’s campaigns. Without anyone to beguile with purchased gifts and cards or cook a homemade meal with the best ingredients, brands might not always see the value in those meandering through life solo. What are they to do on a day that’s all about celebrating relationships? Thankfully, Deliveroo has your back. Meet Third Wheel Kevin. The online food delivering giant conducted some interesting market research that found that 54% of Brits would happily ‘third wheel’ a couple so created the mascot at the centre of this campaign that embraces life as the too often taboo the third wheel. Funny, cheeky, slightly nihilistic, the “Third-Wheel Meal Deal” is an ode to the lonely hearts that shows why it might be time to open up your heart and let your local third wheel in.
Valentine’s Day doesn’t just have to be about cementing existing relationships, it can be about finding new ones. What better time to enter the dating world than when love is on everybody’s mind? Whether through dating apps, a friend of a friend, or fate if you’re a true romantic, the opportunities to find your one true love are out there. But we could all use a helping hand at times. Playing matchmaker for a troop of unsuspecting men/victims, Ford added Cupid to their resume by setting up a series of blind dates with a thrilling twist. Aiming to challenge gender stereotypes in advertising whilst pranking a series of doughy-eyed bachelors, Ford hired a professional stunt driver to give this group a coffee meet up they’ll never forget, whilst also maybe making them think twice before getting into a strangers car again. After a rally around a car park in a Mustang and some hilarious if not terrified reactions, this quirky viral Valentine’s campaign saw Ford receive over 13 million views and even come up for a few awards. Speed dating has never been so literal.
What would Valentine’s Day be without dessert? To get into the spirit, dessert brand Gü crawled through the all-time hall of fame of love songs to come up with a series of tongue in cheek limited-edition packages inspired by love’s greatest hits. Including classics like “Everything I do, I do it for Gü”, “Got my mind set on Gü”, and of course, “And I will always love Gü”, the Love Notes packaging campaign, accompanied by an interactive digital billboard at London Waterloo station, was a great example of using fun and catchy puns to create a special limited-edition campaign perfect for taking home. Which is exactly what all the sweet-toothed lovers out there did with the tasty cheesecake range seeing an increase in sales during the week in which the limited-edition campaign was live.
There’s no secret formula to how and where you may find love, you never know when Cupid’s arrow will strike. That’s why it’s always a good idea to stay alert and take a chance when it presents itself. For this campaign turned social experiment, 32 lonesome shoppers were invited to find love in the unlikeliest of places, doing your Friday night food shop in Tesco. Enlisting the expertise of Food Behaviour Psychologist, Rachel Morris, to break down and analyse the baskets of the selected 32 shoppers to find their most compatible match, Tesco picked up the mantle of matchmaker and offered these single shoppers the opportunity to find their soul mate – all based upon what’s in their basket. Whilst snooping in other people’s baskets at your local to see if they are a good match maybe isn’t our recommended, or most appropriate, way to find the one, having a food psychologist on hand to help give these shoppers the boost they need with 5 of the 16 couples going on a special romantic date with champagne and a Tesco valentine menu! Two of the five even said they’d go on a second date transcending this campaign from a simple ad to effective dating practice.
What’s a matchmaking supermarket chain compared to a matchmaking… octopus? Whichever marketing whizz from within Kraken Rum that came up with this proposal might have just been sampling a bit too much of their own goods, but it’s so out there and unique to the Kraken brand that it works! Inspired by world renowned prophet, Paul the octopus who predicted scores at the 2010 World Cup, Ken the octopus, otherwise known as the ‘cupid of cephalopods’, held the fate of two lucky winners in his many tentacles. Offering those looking for love with a chance for a special date night hosted by Kraken Rum, single individuals were invited to send a selfie to the Kraken Rum Twitter account to get the chance to become one of Ken’s chosen few as the eight-limbed mollusc paired up the winning couple to be whisked away for a one-off experience. Whether the date went well or not is unknown, but Kraken Rum’s outlandish octopus campaign stole plenty of hearts himself.
