Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that Valentine’s Day provides an excellent opportunity for brands, with the total spend around the day coming to $19.6 billion in the U.S. alone, in 2018. And while Valentine’s Day used to be solely a day for loved up couples, in recent years we’ve seen everyone jumping on board; from ‘Galentine’s’ to ‘Palentine’s’, people are celebrating with their friends, their pets and their parents. So there is no reason that your brand can’t get involved as well.

If brands go the right way about it, they can win consumers' hearts while simultaneously putting their brand at the heart of Valentine’s Day. Here, we are exploring some of the ways that brands can go about it.

Get Creative With Valentine’s Day

In 2020, we’re over the cliches associated with Valentine’s Day. Whilst red roses and champagne might have been popular in years gone by, nowadays, if you want your brand to go viral, it’s all about being original.

Why not put a twist on the classic Valentine’s Day gift ideas? For example, in 2016 Doritos played on their byline ‘For The Bold’ and created limited-edition long-stemmed rose bouquets, with each rose expertly handmade out of Doritos corn chips. The ad campaign for the bouquet created a social media storm, garnering millions of video views and 56 million earned impressions. The brand has continued to roll out the campaign each Valentine’s Day since, thus highlighting its success.

Promoting gifts that are slightly out of the ordinary and providing people with gift ideas that break stereotypes and kill cliches are guaranteed to go better than ones that suggest run of the mill gift ideas. If you’re stuck for ideas on ways to stand out, why not join forces with creators who can suggest and implement more creative campaigns that they know their followers, and your target audience, will love? When working with an agency like Influencer, you’ll have access to the creative minds in a collaborative partnership to come up with creative and unique Valentine’s Day ideas.

Appeal To Those Who Hate Valentine’s Day Too

Lots of people love Valentine’s Day, and for the true romantics out there it can be a day of special significance. However, there are also a lot of people who aren’t so keen on Valentine’s and appealing to them can be just as valuable.

A great example of this would be tapping into Galentine’s Day, a nonofficial holiday held on February 13th for "ladies celebrating ladies." Last year, Influencer was tasked with running a Galentine’s Day campaign, #BalmsBeforeBoys, for beauty brand EOS. 12 creators posted to Instagram via both feed posts and Stories, achieving a reach of over 800,000 and an engagement rate of 7.3% (over 5% above the industry average) and highlighting the value to brands of tapping into both Valentine’s Day and the holidays that have been created in response to it.

Be Authentic

People want to see real people and real couples, so it’s wise to stay away from anything that doesn’t feel authentic this Valentine’s Day. Whether that’s creators who are flaunting the perfect relationship, to creating content that makes love seem unrealistic, around Valentine’s Day brands need to be hypersensitive to the fact that consumers can quickly get the ick.

One way to combat this is by working with genuine creators who are willing to open up and give their personal take on Valentine’s Day. People follow social media content creators because they’re interested in their lives, and this will usually include an interest in their relationships. Brands should consider working with creators who are known for their relationships and their honesty around them. By working with these creators to produce an insight into the way they will be spending Valentine’s Day, brands can tap into their following. Using real experiences creates a much more authentic and intimate portrait, that is more likely to appeal to your audience.

Love Is Love

Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all event. When brands start planning their campaigns, they should consider all types of love; from familial love, to LGBTQ+ love, to friendships. As a brand, making sure that your campaign is inclusive can be the way to your customers’ hearts.

This is true throughout the year but never more so than during the Valentine’s Day period when there has previously been a tendency to focus on heterosexual couples, and others may be made to feel excluded. When planning your campaign consider whether it assumes all couples are heterosexual; whether it allows for non-traditional families; whether it's inclusive or will make others feel forgotten?

Working with creators to produce inclusive campaign content that they know will appeal to their followers, and therefore the brand’s target audience, allows brands to ensure their campaigns resonate with the widest possible audience and make everyone feel loved this Valentine's Day!