Brands Get Romantic This Valentine’s Day

Aishwarya Krishnamurthy
August 8, 2014 • 4 min read
Updated on September 19, 2019
Romance is in the air, and more importantly – on social media. Brands strive to capitalize on events and holidays as much as possible, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. Apart from being blatant self promotion, event based posts or tweets (we call them Engagement Bazookas), also give brands a sense of personality which fans and followers tend to gravitate towards.
Unmetric took a look at some of the brands that got great engagement by leveraging Feb 14th on Facebook and Twitter.
Pets continue to steal the show!
As we’ve pointed out earlier, pet brands are social media rockstars and almost all their content receives amazing engagement. PETA’s Valentine’s Day post on Facebook, while not their most engaging post, had the highest engagement score for a V-Day related post.
Engagement Score: 998
[The Engagement Score on Facebook is calculated based on the number of Likes, Comments, Shares and Audience Reception Rate that each post receives]
Coffee-mate got their fans involved in their Valentine’s Day campaign – “Design My Valentine”. Fans were encouraged to send their love notes in the comments section (or on Twitter), and a select few would be brought to life by artists, commissioned by the brand. The post on the 12th of February, announcing the campaign garnered a great engagement score of 946, but their most popular post was on Valentine’s Day itself.
Engagement Score : 977
Engagement Score : 910
Tiffany & Co also did well on Facebook with their Valentine’s Day related posts, like the one below.
Engagement Score : 903
The jewelry giant not only posted suggestions for gifts, they also rolled out an app that allowed fans to create personalised Tiffany Valentines,like the one below, and send them to loved ones.
The app “Love, Tiffany” averaged a MAU (Monthly Active Users) count of 8,475 which is six times greater than the average app from the Luxury Sector (1,386). [On a side note, the app allows users to choose the genders of the two characters, making the app very LGBT friendly too!]
Love in 140 Characters
Taco Bell, always a Twitter darling, saw immense engagement on a couple of their Valentine’s Day related posts. The brand’s Twitter account usually has a humanized, conversational tone and this comes across in their Valentine’s Day tweets as well. Two of their Valentine’s Day tweets, including the one below, garnered an engagement score of 1000. [The Engagement Score on Twitter is calculated based on the number of Favorites, Replies, Retweets and Audience Reception Rate that the tweet received]
Taco Bell is my Valentine.
— Taco Bell (@TacoBell) February 14, 2014
A third tweet, posted on the 12th of February, also received an engagement score of 1000 and was retweeted more that 11,000 times.
Want to cuddle and eat Taco Bell?
— Taco Bell (@TacoBell) February 12, 2014
Disney brought together some of the most beloved Disney love stories in their Valentine’s Day tweet. From Aladdin and Jasmine,to Beauty and the Beast, the picture seemed to resonate well with followers and consequently the brand saw great engagement for the tweet.
Engagement Score: 984
Happy Valentine’s Day. pic.twitter.com/fhkWIsiC3G
— Disney (@Disney) February 14, 2014
Another way to win hearts (and engagement) on Twitter is to have a “Re-tweet to Win” offer or contest, and that is exactly what Starbucks did this year.
Engagement Score: 999
Coffee > flowers RT @StarbucksStore From 2-5pm on 2/14, buy any latte and get one for free. #letsgettogether
— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) February 13, 2014
This tweet got retweeted more than 14,000 times by users, and the hashtag #letsgettogether received a massive engagement score of 999.
In the chart above, we can see that the hashtag was used most on the day that the offer was announced, but also received decent traction on the 14th as well.
Gamers rejoiced when Rockstar Games hosted a Valentine’s Weekend Special Event around its Grand Theft Auto game. Players could win a variety of in game rewards, bonuses and other prizes by playing the game through the weekend. The tweet also contained a link to the official website with the entire details of the event.
Engagement Score: 994
#GTAOnline Valentine’s Weekend Special Event: Bonus RP, Crate Drops & more: http://t.co/IOJBvmzJAO pic.twitter.com/gt9UbhhvVd
— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) February 13, 2014
Most people would assume that Valentine’s Day traditionally belonged to the flowers and chocolates sector. However, this year we found that many brands across sectors were using the day of love, either to show their love to customers, or to allow customers to personalize their messages to their loved ones.
We also found that a brand’s key demographic isn’t necessarily a factor to gauge how well an Engagement Bazooka will do. While the demographic that engaged on Tiffany’s Facebook post was mostly women, the demographic of Rockstar’s followers as well as EASPORTSFIFA are mainly males, and their tweets on Valentine’s Day saw high engagement.
Therefore, with a little imagination, any brand can succesfully leverage a holiday or event, and increase their engagement on social media.
Methodology
Unmetric compiled the report by sourcing data from its own social media benchmarking platform. Unmetric Engagement Scores fall in the range of 1 – 1000. Data and Insights on Facebook and Twitter were analyzed for the period of Feb 10th –Feb 15th,2014.