Valentine’s Day is an emo­tion­al hol­i­day that means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. For some, it’s all about gaz­ing into their beloved’s eyes and feel­ing warm fuzzies as the sun shines and birds sing; for oth­ers, it means draw­ing the cur­tains and drown­ing one’s sor­rows with wine while watch­ing an end­less loop of roman­tic come­dies and won­der­ing where it all went wrong. Savvy brands know this. And for Valentine’s Day 2015 in par­tic­u­lar, many are deliv­er­ing visu­al con­tent to tell sto­ries that cater to both of these par­ties. Mean­while, oth­er brands are offer­ing per­son­al­ized con­tent and attempt­ing to facil­i­tate real-world con­nec­tions.

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Here are Momen­tol­ogy’s 14 favorite exam­ples of brands seek­ing to make emo­tion­al con­nec­tions with con­sumers on Valentine’s Day.

Top 14 Valentine’s Day Marketing Campaigns Of 2015

Hallmark

The greet­ing card brand has released a series of sev­en videos on its YouTube chan­nel, Put Your Heart to Paper, which range from about 20,000 to 1.8 mil­lion views.

In each video, the brand asks a cou­ple to describe how they feel about each oth­er with­out using the word “love.”

Or, as Hall­mark puts it, “Say­ing ‘I love you’ is easy. It’s three lit­tle words. What’s hard is going beyond that, going deep­er than that. Express­ing how you real­ly feel.”

The result­ing videos have a strong emo­tion­al ele­ment and the brand invites con­sumers to share their input using the hash­tag #PutY­our­Heart­ToPa­per, which has gen­er­at­ed about 3,000 tweets in the past month, per Top­sy.

“Today, there are so many ways to con­nect,” said Pam Kel­ley, Hall­mark edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor, in a pre­pared state­ment. “But when you need more than a text or social media, Hall­mark makes it easy to say just how you feel in a way that’s real and last­ing.”

Ford

In a pro­mo for the 2015 Ford Mus­tang, the Amer­i­can auto man­u­fac­tur­er went a slight­ly dif­fer­ent route and brought in “a beau­ti­ful pro­fes­sion­al stunt dri­ver” and “[asked] a bunch of unsus­pect­ing guys to meet her on a blind date they’ll nev­er see com­ing” in its Mus­tang Speed Dat­ing video, which, as of Feb­ru­ary 12, had about 4.1 mil­lion views.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Nyr1Ao7iZA

A sim­i­lar video from Pep­si Max fea­tur­ing race car dri­ver Jeff Gor­don on a faux test dri­ve with an unsus­pect­ing car sales­man went on to rack up 43.7 mil­lion views.

WestJet

Cana­di­an air­line West­Jet also cre­at­ed a video for Valentine’s Day fea­tur­ing two Toron­to-area cou­ples. The brand says it iden­ti­fied two men shop­ping for engage­ment rings in Novem­ber and offered to send them to Bar­ba­dos, with the catch being that West­Jet got to decide when they actu­al­ly pro­posed to their girl­friends.

The result­ing sev­en-minute video has about 500,000 views to date and “the result was an expe­ri­ence the two cou­ples will remem­ber for the rest of their lives, and a fun­ny, heart­warm­ing Valen­tine’s Day sto­ry to share with Cana­di­ans,” said Corey Evans, man­ag­er of spon­sor­ship and com­mu­ni­ty invest­ment at West­Jet, in a pre­pared state­ment.

West­Jet is no stranger to viral hol­i­day videos. Its 2013 Christ­mas Mir­a­cle video, for exam­ple, has 40.6 mil­lion views.

“As a medi­um, video is a tremen­dous way to con­nect with con­sumers because it allows you, in a very, very com­plete way to tell a sto­ry,” said Robert Palmer, WestJet’s man­ag­er of pub­lic rela­tions. “It allows you to…interview peo­ple and show the very human side of things. Look at some of the amaz­ing aspects of the Valentine’s Day video – the laugh­ter, the facial expres­sions of the two cou­ples. They were priceless…We could not have told that sto­ry with­out video…and so that’s real­ly what it was all about: Telling a good sto­ry.”

Cartier

The French jew­el­er says it “pays trib­ute to love” in The Pro­pos­al, a film with “three love sto­ries set in the City of Light [and] three ways to make time stand still and say ‘I love you.’”

Since it was post­ed Feb­ru­ary 2, the video has 1.5 mil­lion views.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=n9AZUAYLFKg

Oreo

Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency 360i says it has cre­at­ed “sto­ries about awk­ward, unex­pect­ed romance” in a series of goofy video shorts for Red Vel­vet Ore­os.

More specif­i­cal­ly, the brand says it will release six short videos “high­light­ing the effect of Red Vel­vet on every­day sit­u­a­tions that could use a lit­tle love,” like “the dread­ed mid­dle seat on an air­plane, or a crowd­ed city bus – but, with a light-heart­ed change in per­spec­tive, become much more man­age­able and even at times inter­est­ing.”

360i says the cam­paign “cen­ters around the idea that Red Vel­vet seems to have a cer­tain ‘effect’ on peo­ple, no mat­ter their age, per­son­al­i­ty, or rela­tion­ship sta­tus” and the cam­paign tar­gets “every­one – espe­cial­ly skep­ti­cal mil­len­ni­als who aren’t exact­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the hol­i­day.”

The video con­tent is housed on YouTube with addi­tion­al GIFs and Valentine’s‑themed mes­sag­ing on Face­book, Twit­ter, and Tum­blr where, 360i says, Oreo is “invit­ing fans to ‘feel the feel­ings.’”  The cam­paign is fur­ther sup­port­ed with paid media across social tar­get­ed at Oreo fans and less enthu­si­as­tic mil­len­ni­als with non-Valentine’s Day plans, 360i says.

Per Top­sy, the hash­tag #Red­Vel­ve­tOreo has gen­er­at­ed 18,000 tweets in the past month.

Snuggle

The fab­ric soft­en­er brand is pro­mot­ing what it calls the “snug,” or “a hug, but with more love,” with snug-relat­ed con­tent from its spokes­bear, includ­ing snug­gling tips and Snug­gle Valen­tine Video Cards, which allow con­sumers to choose from more than 400 names spo­ken by Snug­gle Bear and five dif­fer­ent video mes­sages share­able on Face­book and Twit­ter and via e‑mail.

The brand is also dis­patch­ing “a rov­ing Snug­Mo­bile” in New York on Feb­ru­ary 13 to attempt a Guin­ness World Record title of the “most hugs giv­en by a pup­pet in eight hours” which, the brand notes, “comes at a time when more and more peo­ple are look­ing to con­nect by snug­gling up to each oth­er. Pro­fes­sion­al cud­dling ser­vices and even social media apps and online match­ing ser­vices are emerg­ing that con­nect peo­ple through their mutu­al inter­est in hugs and Snugs,” Snug­gle says.

In a pre­pared state­ment, Bibie Wu, Snuggle’s vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing, added, “Snuggle’s mis­sion of mak­ing the world a soft­er place is more rel­e­vant and impor­tant than ever, and Valentine’s Day is the per­fect time to cel­e­brate it with a Snug.”

Revlon

Cos­met­ics com­pa­ny Revlon has teamed up with Google to launch an ani­mat­ed, per­son­al­ized share­able Valentine’s Day GIF e‑card pro­gram.

Accord­ing to the brand, con­sumers can “send bespoke mes­sages of love to some­one spe­cial, mak­ing each con­sumer part of Revlon’s world­wide Love is On move­ment.”

onsumers can par­tic­i­pate by engag­ing with any of the Revlon expand­able engage­ment ads across desk­top, tablet and mobile on the Google Dis­play Net­work. Addi­tion­al­ly, con­sumers can vis­it the Revlon web­site to cre­ate their pho­tograms, the brand says.

Per Bri­an McDe­vitt, indus­try direc­tor of home and per­son­al care at Google, this marks “the first time a brand has invit­ed users to upload to and cre­ate con­tent direct­ly with­in an engage­ment ad.”

Using Google tech­nol­o­gy, con­sumers select their favorite Revlon Ultra HD Lip­stick Col­or, upload an image and “watch as the per­fect kiss – the phys­i­cal sym­bol of love – is placed direct­ly on their cheek,” result­ing in a share­able .GIF, with a spe­cial love note. Con­sumers are also encour­aged to use the hash­tag #LOVEISON when shar­ing on social media for a chance to be fea­tured on the Revlon Glob­al Love Bea­con in Times Square. Per Top­sy, the hash­tag has about 5,000 men­tions in the past 30 days.

“When we start­ed the Love is On move­ment, we knew that Valentine’s Day would be an impor­tant date for Revlon as it is a glob­al cel­e­bra­tion of love,” said Mar­tine Williamson, SVP of Glob­al Mar­ket­ing for Revlon Col­or Cos­met­ics. “Work­ing with Google on this inno­v­a­tive .GIF is the per­fect vehi­cle to spread the Love is On mes­sage in a per­son­al­ized and spe­cial way.”

Match.com and Starbucks

Star­bucks and Match.com say they are offer­ing sin­gles new oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect at Star­bucks this year.

Accord­ing to Match, more than 3 mil­lion mem­bers list “cof­fee and con­ver­sa­tion” as one of their inter­ests and, as of Jan­u­ary 29, these mem­bers have been able to use a new Meet at Star­bucks fea­ture “to more eas­i­ly reach out and make that first cof­fee date” by send­ing an email to some­one they might like and find­ing a con­ve­nient Star­bucks loca­tion.

Addi­tion­al­ly, on Feb­ru­ary 13, in par­tic­i­pat­ing Star­bucks loca­tions, cus­tomers are invit­ed to join the World’s Largest Star­bucks Date. Par­tic­i­pat­ing mar­kets include the U.S., Cana­da, U.K., France, Ger­many, Aus­tria, Nether­lands, Switzer­land, India, Chi­na, South Korea, Tai­wan and Viet­nam, a Star­bucks rep says.

Per Star­bucks, from 2 p.m. to close, a spe­cial pair­ings menu “will be com­ple­ment­ed with in-store expe­ri­ences designed to facil­i­tate con­nec­tion and cel­e­brate love, includ­ing spe­cial in-store music playlists cho­sen by Star­bucks part­ners (employ­ees), and pho­to props to doc­u­ment and share your #Star­bucks­Date.”

The Star­bucks rep declined to share data regard­ing the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants. How­ev­er, Top­sy says the hash­tag has been used 6,000 times in the last 30 days.

“There’s no bet­ter time to cel­e­brate mean­ing­ful moments of con­nec­tion, and encour­age new ones, than dur­ing Valentine’s Day,” said Sharon Roth­stein, Star­bucks glob­al chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer, in a state­ment. “For more than 40 years Star­bucks has been a place to con­nect over a great cup of cof­fee.”

 

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Pilot Pens

Pen brand Pilot notes that great love has been com­mem­o­rat­ed with hand­writ­ten love notes for cen­turies, but it is often dif­fi­cult to sit down to pen and post a Valen­tine’s Day mes­sage in this busy dig­i­tal age.

That’s why the brand cre­at­ed its Pilot Love Guru, which, for the third year in a row, will “brings the heart­felt writ­ten word into the dig­i­tal space by cre­at­ing cus­tom one-of-a-kind hand­writ­ten notes to send to those we love through Face­book, Twit­ter, and Insta­gram.”

The brand says the #Pilot­Love­G­u­ru has “already played cupid for hun­dreds of lovers and friends.” A Pilot rep says the brand has seen a 20 per­cent increase in notes each year and expects to cre­ate more than 200 notes this Valen­tine’s Day.

To par­tic­i­pate, con­sumers can tweet, tag, com­ment or share their valentine’s name with the hash­tag #Pilot­Love­G­u­ru on Twit­ter, Insta­gram, or Face­book. Pilot says its “spe­cial­ly trained Love Gurus” will hand write a “per­son­al­ized and heart­felt note and send it to your valen­tine via the select­ed social net­work.”

The rep says each of the mes­sages is cus­tomized based on the con­sumer’s orig­i­nal mes­sage to Pilot.

“Some fol­low­ers give very spe­cif­ic mes­sages and some just give names. We’re hap­py to help craft a love note based on either,” the rep says. “We look at the year and pin­point strate­gic time-peri­ods when the writ­ten word is most impact­ful. Obvi­ous­ly, the emo­tion­al val­ue of a hand-writ­ten note on a day that is all about pas­sion is very pow­er­ful and Pilot wants to give every­one the oppor­tu­ni­ty to share a hand-writ­ten note, even if they’re not sure of what words to say.”

In a press release, Ari­ann Langsam, direc­tor of con­sumer mar­ket­ing at Pilot added, “There’s a unique mag­ic that hap­pens when pen meets paper, and we want to make it sim­ple for our fol­low­ers and friends to share that mag­ic in the dig­i­tal realm.”

FunnyHowFlowersDoThat.co.uk

The online florist dis­patched the #Cupidrone, a “real, ful­ly oper­a­tional drone” that “[search­es] for tar­gets armed with a red rose.”

The Cupidrone was released over the streets of Verona, which it says is home of the world’s most famous cou­ple, Romeo and Juli­et, and is also where the brand says it looked for “enam­ored cou­ples and lone­ly souls who are look­ing for love.”

Also per FunnyHowFlowersDoThat.co.uk, when Cupidrone spot­ted his tar­get, he dropped a red rose “deliv­ered by stealth.” A YouTube video of the stunt has 116,000 views.

A TGI Friday’s in Brook­lyn attempt­ed a sim­i­lar roman­tic effort with a mistle­toe drone in Decem­ber, but it result­ed in an unfor­tu­nate out­come for at least one cus­tomer.

Sour Patch Kids

The can­dy brand is ask­ing its fol­low­ers to share #SPKSAD sto­ries for #Sin­gle­sAware­ness­Day on Twit­ter, which, per Top­sy, has about 2200 tweets over­all. That includes a part­ner­ship with plat­form Wattpad, which says it con­nects peo­ple through words, to read and write “sour then sweet love sto­ries.”

McKinney

For its part, adver­tis­ing agency McK­in­ney is ask­ing fans to Insta­gram or tweet an image of their exes to @ShredYourEx with the hash­tag #ShredY­ourEx and then vis­it ShredYourEx.tv to watch what it calls “a live feed of your pho­to print­ing direct­ly into a paper shred­der above a dig­i­tal fire.”

A McK­in­ney rep says the effort is part of McKinney’s Ten Per­cent, a pro­gram that encour­ages employ­ees to set aside 10 per­cent of their time focus­ing on new appli­ca­tions of cre­ativ­i­ty and tech­nol­o­gy. As a result, McK­in­ney hacked the print­er API to take Insta­gram and Twit­ter infor­ma­tion from the Web direct­ly to a print­er. A thin PHP wrap­per checks Insta­gram and Twit­ter user infor­ma­tion for three things: men­tion of the @ShredYourEx han­dle, the hash­tag #ShredY­ourEx and one image. If a post con­tains all three, ShredY­ourEx sends the image direct­ly to the print­er, the agency says.

“Here’s a way they can warm their cold hearts with the heal­ing pow­er of sweet destruc­tion,” McK­in­ney says. In addi­tion, when Valentine’s Day is over, the shred­ded paper will go to an ani­mal shel­ter to help keep pup­pies and kit­tens warm, the agency says.

A McK­in­ney rep says the agency will share num­bers “most like­ly” today as Valentine’s week­end gets start­ed.

Whole Foods

Whole Foods, which calls itself America’s most roman­tic gro­cery store, has post­ed a tongue-in-cheek video, How to Be Roman­tic, which, as of Feb­ru­ary 12, has about 2,600 views.

“At Whole Foods Mar­ket we are build­ing a busi­ness in which high stan­dards per­me­ate all aspects of our com­pa­ny, from the prod­ucts on our shelves to the peo­ple you’ll find strolling through our aisles,” the brand says on YouTube. “That’s right. We guar­an­tee you will find the high­est qual­i­ty and best selec­tion of sin­gle peo­ple in the entire coun­try. Shop here and you’re bound to find your dream lover. And when you do we’ve got your back.”

ConAgra

Accord­ing to ConA­gra Foods’ Din­ing In Sur­vey, 52 per­cent of mil­len­ni­als think cook­ing at home is more roman­tic than going out to eat, but 84 per­cent say they lack recipe ideas for a roman­tic evening at home.

As a result, ConA­gra Foods curat­ed Valentine’s Day recipes fea­tur­ing its brands like Hunt’s toma­toes, Alex­ia Foods and Red­di-wip and part­nered with Inter­net cook­ing show host Lau­ra Vitale and gro­cery deliv­ery ser­vice Instacart.

Vitale will post two how-to cook­ing videos on her YouTube chan­nel. Con­sumers will also be able to add ingre­di­ents for the recipes to a vir­tu­al bas­ket and Instacart will deliv­er every­thing to their doors, ConA­gra says. In addi­tion, the brand is encour­ag­ing cou­ples to post a pic­ture of their Valen­tine’s Day meals with the hash­tag #VDayIn.

Hertz

Car rental brand Hertz says it is giv­ing cus­tomers the chance to win “the ulti­mate date do-over” in its Dream Date Rewind pro­mo­tion, which asks con­sumers to sub­mit a pho­to or video with a descrip­tion of a bad date expe­ri­ence on Face­book or Twit­ter.

Win­ners will receive a lux­u­ry Hertz Dream Car rental. Hertz’s Dream Car col­lec­tion includes makes/models like the Aston Mar­tin V8 Van­tage, Bent­ley Con­ti­nen­tal GT, Lam­borgh­i­ni Gal­lar­do, and Tes­la Mod­el S.

“At Hertz we are always look­ing for new ways to tap into the fun of dri­ving, and noth­ing sets the tone for a great date night like an impres­sive vehi­cle,” said Bob Stu­art, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of glob­al sales and mar­ket­ing, in a state­ment. “The Hertz Dream Date Rewind pro­mo­tion will give deserv­ing cus­tomers the chance to expe­ri­ence a lux­u­ry Dream Car rental to help erase those mem­o­ries of a date gone wrong and replace them with mem­o­ries of a dream date come true.”

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Honorable Mention

White Castle and Waffle House

Much like quick ser­vice chain While Cas­tle has long done in its Valentine’s Day Love Cas­tle pro­mo­tion, for the eighth con­sec­u­tive year, Waf­fle House says it will “roll out white table­cloths, light truck­loads of can­dles and craft tai­lored menus to set the stage for a one-of-a-kind Valen­tine’s Day expe­ri­ence.”

The brand encour­ages cus­tomers to find a list of par­tic­i­pat­ing loca­tions on its web­site and call for reser­va­tions, as well as to share pho­tos from their Valen­tine’s Day vis­its via Insta­gram or on the Waf­fle House Face­book page with the hash­tag #waffles4lovers.

“Whether you’re out with friends, fam­i­ly, or your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, a heap­ing plate of hash­browns is sure to put a smile on every­one’s face,” says Waf­fle House.