Top marketing tactics for Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is not only a day for young people to express their love, but also a day for brands to use innovative marketing activities to enhance their influence among young people. This article introduces the Valentine's Day marketing strategies of four brands and is recommended for marketing professionals.

February 14th, Valentine's Day, is a day for young people to express their love. It is also a marketing node that brands must compete for. In order to gain attention and stimulate user consumption, it can be said that brands have tried their best.

On this day of love, how to make brand marketing unconventional has become a difficult problem for brand marketing. Which brands’ marketing on Valentine’s Day this year are both romantic and eye-catching?

01 Luckin Coffee: Redefining the meaning of "dog"

Every Valentine's Day is a day when singles are "tortured" and are often nicknamed "single dogs", which means lonely and pitiful. However, this year, Luckin Coffee went the other way and redefined the meaning of "dog", turning the "dog" that symbolizes loneliness and singleness into a symbol of love with pink bubbles and sweetness.

Taking advantage of this marketing opportunity, Luckin Coffee collaborated with the healing and adorable "Stripe Puppy" that has become popular on the entire Internet, and launched limited stickers, cup sleeves, bags, etc. At the same time, it launched new products "Prickly Rose Latte" and "Lovesickness Red Bean Latte", providing singles with an opportunity to celebrate Valentine's Day/confess their secret crush.

It can be said that there is no one who doesn’t like cute things. As soon as Luckin Coffee’s co-branded products appeared, the brand limited bags and limited stickers were quickly sold out.

At the same time, Luckin Coffee's operation ignited the enthusiasm of users. Paper bags and cup sleeves became materials for users to use their imagination. Creative "new" products such as story picture books, storage boxes, mobile phone cases, windmills, card holders and Luckin brand flower wrapping paper emerged one after another, increasing the fun and highlights of the content and achieving a screen-sweeping effect on the entire network.

It can be said that UGC content is a verification of the effectiveness of brand marketing, and it has brought the volume of Luckin Coffee's marketing to a new high, which shows that Luckin Coffee understands both users and love. Amid the wave of UGC creative impact, some netizens have a wild imagination and linked Luckin Coffee with He Guangzhi's line "I am really a rose with thorns" in a previous talk show. They have called on the brand to let "He Guangzhi endorse" and let Guangzhi recognize "thorny rose latte".

Surprisingly, Luckin's brand department actually hired He Guangzhi in just one week, and this morning officially announced that He Guangzhi is Luckin's "forced product experience officer." The humorous official announcement and the long-awaited advertising endorsement were refreshing and allowed the public to experience that "a forced melon is really sweet."

Luckin Coffee also used two waves of marketing on Valentine's Day to greatly mobilize users' enthusiasm for participation and interaction, and maximize the social sense. As of press time, Luckin Coffee has achieved considerable data in terms of the volume of social topics on Valentine's Day and its cooperation with Guangzhi, and its communication influence is also evident.

But marketing is always intentional. Behind this Valentine's Day marketing "drama" with one climax after another, Luckin Coffee's keen sense of hot spots and new product research and development capabilities, coupled with just the right marketing strategy, have created this surprising and sweet marketing template.

02 vivo: Creating a romantic story for Valentine's Day

If Luckin Coffee's marketing focuses on the novel and sweet experience brought by the climaxes, then vivo's Valentine's Day marketing demonstrates the dedicated and affectionate marketing charm.

During this Valentine's Day, vivo once again launched the brand's popular 3D creative animation short film with movie-level picture quality, the second installment of the love story of the black cat and the white cat, providing users with an immersive product usage "tutorial", giving technological products a humanistic warmth with superb visual and auditory experience, and perfectly interpreting what "love makes my eyes full of you" means.

The content tells the story of the performance of Black Cat and White Cat. Facing the curtain call performance of Black Cat's tour, at an important moment for Black Cat, he was reduced to a background board due to problems with lighting technology, which made Black Cat very unhappy. However, White Cat knew his pain and unhappiness, and gave him vivo's 4K super-sensing "night vision device", which made Black Cat's presence felt at an important moment in his life, with perfect stage effects, and gave the story a sweet and perfect ending.

The story seems to describe the love story of cats, but in fact it is a call for people to cherish the people around them, so that everyone will have no regrets in the important moments of their lives.

The brand uses a combination of cute pets, animation and technological products to provide users with a visual and audio feast. The ingenious integration of vivo mobile phone's 4K super-sensing "night vision goggles" and stories realizes the emotional connection between users, brands and products.

In addition, the blend of the contrasting content of cute cats and hardcore technology products has achieved a more concrete expression of the warmth of the technology brand, leaving a deep impression on the public. It has also subtly shaped the brand image, making the mobile phone brand more humane and full of vitality.

03 Bananain: Don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, let love return to daily life

It can be said that vivo has achieved the integration of the warm expression of technological products and the warm marketing of human emotions, making the advertising content more expressive. However, Mr. Bingfa found that Bananain did not follow the usual path and completed the brand's Valentine's Day communication appeal with a ghostly and magical advertising film.

In Bananain's short advertising film, the brand used 4 magical advertisements, breaking the brand's exclusive limitation of celebrating Valentine's Day through the reverse operation of "not celebrating Valentine's Day". The brand also reminded the target audience through reverse expression that expressing love should be done every week, not just on Valentine's Day.

In the short film, Bananain's advertising content structure and humorous expression are very mind-blowing and add more interesting expressions to the content.

In terms of content structure , Bananain presents content in the form of recording daily life. The fixed expression leaves room for users' imagination, allowing users to look forward to the next piece of advertising content while watching brand advertisements.

At the same time, the four commercials seem to be funny and disconnected in a serious way, but in fact, Bananain showcases the products in the brand's Valentine's Day gift box one by one, and demonstrates the comfort and material of the products, achieving a subtle implantation of the brand's products.

In terms of expression , each of Bananain's advertisements starts with a familiar proverb and then turns to another one, such as "No one steps into the same river twice, except the river of love", "You won't turn back until you hit the wall, but you can always find love", "Good medicine tastes bitter, but it is good for illness, not for lovesickness", "Valentine's Day is all about lovers" , and then leads to the communication proposition "Don't celebrate Valentine's Day" . Bananain uses humorous homophonic puns to achieve the dissemination of product information and the deepening of brand appeal.

While many brands are expressing their love on Valentine's Day, Bananain proposed the idea of ​​"not celebrating Valentine's Day". This reverse marketing model is eye-opening. At the same time, this marketing model that goes against the grain allows the brand to differentiate itself from the homogeneous content, which is impressive and highlights the brand's image of being playful and daring.

04 Tiffany: Innovating design concepts and exploring emotional bonds

Almost all brands have targeted Valentine's Day as a marketing node, and Tiffany is no exception. While other brands compete in marketing creativity mainly on content and advertising structure, Tiffany's Valentine's Day marketing is very ingenious in product creativity and innovates product design.

In traditional Chinese culture, locks are a must-have item for every household. They are auspicious items that symbolize safety and longevity. They are also basically items that infants and young children will wear.

In the design of Valentine's Day products, Tiffany launched the Tiffany Lock series of products, which are inspired by locks and have the meaning of mutual understanding. The product is meant to be an emotional bond that connects each other and one's own inner strength.

In addition to product designs inspired by locks, Tiffany invited pioneering designer Elsa Peretti to launch the Open Heart series of jewelry. The heart-shaped jewelry is classic and simple in design, which not only carries the designer's love for all things in nature, but also conveys deep affection.

Together with the Paloma Picasso® series of product designs inspired by olive branches, which symbolize love and hope, Tiffany's Valentine's Day product series is formed. Basically, each product design is unique and contains special feelings.

While many brands are choosing to communicate with consumers through marketing content, Tiffany uses unique product design to communicate with young people, and provides products that highlight love to young people who advocate that love should be said out loud, highlighting the brand's image of understanding users better and providing consumers with new options for Valentine's Day gifts.

Tiffany uses Valentine's Day as a touchpoint to connect with users, capturing the central node for young people to express their love. Its user products explore the boundaries of design, with simple and elegant design and the noble feeling integrated into the brand's genes, which is refreshing. The brand also achieves the transmission of product information and the precipitation of the brand's focus on user quality at a marketing node that fits the occasion.

Final Thoughts

In Mr. Bingfa's opinion, if a brand wants to occupy a dominant position in marketing at popular nodes and enhance its influence among young people, differentiation, sustainability and creativity based on people-oriented approach are the keys to standing out from the competition. The synergy of multiple parties may produce miraculous results.

On the occasion of Valentine's Day, the brand used innovative marketing activities, content and forms to build a bridge of communication with users, created a marketing that integrated product value and emotional value, captured the minds of users, paved the way for product sales, and truly achieved product and effect integration.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"