As mil­lions of Amer­i­can con­sumers buy cards, flow­ers, choco­lates and the like to cel­e­brate the ones they love, Taco Bell says it has mon­i­tored the online behav­ior of its pas­sion­ate young fans and knows pre­cise­ly what they want for Valentine’s Day. This gift is tem­po­rary, but reflects per­ma­nent brand love, Taco Bell says. And, along with a peti­tion for a taco emo­ji and some Snapchat horo­scopes, the brand says it is try­ing to build an authen­tic friend­ship with its fans by giv­ing them what they want and also by inte­grat­ing itself into their lifestyles.

It’s a big com­mit­ment to com­mem­o­rate Cupid’s arrow with tat­too nee­dles, so quick ser­vice chain Taco Bell is offer­ing its pas­sion­ate young fans – who may still have some prover­bial oats to sow – a slight­ly less per­ma­nent alter­na­tive for Valentine’s Day.

In fact, Taco Bell is show­ing Valentine’s Day love to its fol­low­ers by giv­ing away Taco Bell-themed flash tat­toos via Insta­gram, Face­book, Snapchat, and Twit­ter on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 13.

Accord­ing to a Taco Bell rep, the brand will give out “about one hun­dred for free (per­haps more),” and will also be sell­ing the flash tat­toos online on a Taco Bell Flash Tat­toos web­site pow­ered by ecom­merce soft­ware provider Shopi­fy.

Flash tat­toos are metal­lic, jew­el­ry-inspired tem­po­rary tat­toos that last a lit­tle less than a week.

“They’re very trendy amongst mil­len­ni­als right now,” the rep added.

On Valentine’s Day Eve, Taco Bell will let its fans know the flash tat­toos are avail­able on its social chan­nels. The posts will include a unique code that allows the first 100 fans to vis­it TacoBellFlashTattoos.com to get the tat­toos for free. There­after, fans can pur­chase tat­toos for $8.99 per sheet, or three sheets for $19.99, on the same web­site. Taco Bell will then mail the flash tat­toos to recip­i­ents, pre­sum­ably mak­ing for a some­what belat­ed valen­tine.

Taco Bell will pro­mote the effort on relat­ed chan­nels, where it has mil­lions of fans/followers, includ­ing: 1.5 mil­lion on Twit­ter, 10.7 mil­lion on Face­book, and 482,000 on Insta­gram.

“It’s very sim­ple to pro­mote flash sales across these chan­nels and we’re also for­tu­nate enough to have very pas­sion­ate fans who engage with us on these chan­nels,” accord­ing to Taco Bel­l’s rep.

Flash tat­toos are pop­u­lar among mil­len­ni­al females in par­tic­u­lar. The brand says it always looks to its “cus­tomers and friends in social media” for inspi­ra­tion and “noticed that flash tat­toos are some­thing that they enjoy incor­po­rat­ing into their per­son­al styles – some even get real Taco Bell tat­toos,” which is what inspired the brand to cre­ate the cus­tom brand­ed flash tat­toos.

“Our social strat­e­gy is to tru­ly build an authen­tic friend­ship with our fans, so we’re very excit­ed to gift them with some­thing they’re into, in addi­tion to always mak­ing our food avail­able to them at our restau­rants,” the rep said. “We want our fans to know that while these tat­toos may be tem­po­rary, Taco Bell’s love for its fans is per­ma­nent.”

While Taco Bell calls the prod­uct “flash tat­toos,” the rep notes the brand “worked with our own ven­dor to cre­ate our cus­tom flash tat­toos” and the Taco Bell tat­toos do not come from the brand Flash Tat­toos.

This isn’t the brand’s first flash sale in social media. The rep says the brand has also sold Taco Bell sweat­shirts for Nation­al Taco Day (which is Octo­ber 4) and taco emo­ji t‑shirts to pro­mote its cam­paign to get a taco emo­ji, in which it actu­al­ly sub­mit­ted a Change.org peti­tion.

In the peti­tion, Taco Bell notes that Uni­code Con­sor­tium, a non­prof­it that reg­u­lates the cod­ing stan­dards for writ­ten com­put­er text that includes emo­jis, announced it has accept­ed 37 new emo­ji char­ac­ters – includ­ing a taco emo­ji — as can­di­dates for Uni­code 8.0, which is sched­uled for mid-2015.

“We need your help con­vinc­ing them THE TACO EMOJI NEEDS TO HAPPEN,” Taco Bell writes. “Why do piz­za and ham­burg­er lovers get an emo­ji but taco lovers don’t? Here’s a bet­ter ques­tion: why do we need four dif­fer­ent types of mail­box­es? Or 25 dif­fer­ent types of clocks? Or a VCR tape and flop­py disk emo­ji? No one even uses those things any­more.”

As of Feb­ru­ary 11, the peti­tion has more than 28,000 sig­na­tures.

“We want to seam­less­ly inte­grate Taco Bell into our fans’ lifestyles, whether it’s through our food, mobile app, or unique mer­chan­dise like these flash tat­toos,” the rep says.

The mer­chan­dise the brand sells via flash sales and at www.LiveMasStore.com also ben­e­fits its Taco Bell Foun­da­tion for Teens, which encour­ages teens to fin­ish high school.

In addi­tion, Taco Bell fans unsure of their roman­tic futures this Valentine’s Day might be inter­est­ed to know the brand has start­ed doing Taco Bell horo­scopes via Snapchat.

“We’re always look­ing for unique ways to pro­vide our fans with fun con­tent on that plat­form,” the Taco Bell rep says. “In the past, we’ve cre­at­ed games on the plat­form, quizzes and dif­fer­ent sto­ries. Horo­scopes are just anoth­er piece of con­tent we’re explor­ing.”

What do you think of Taco Bel­l’s effort to show its young fans brand love?