Radical Thoughts || Shubham Shukla || IIM Shillong || February 2016 edition

“According to a plethora of studies men spend almost twice as much as women on Valentine’s Day.” Valentine’s Week- The week of love and affection, the week of chocolates, cards, hugs and whatnot, but is it also a week for marketers. There are many controversies which say that the Valentine’s Week is a corporate creation in order to boost sales of cards, flowers, chocolates and gifts in general, after all Valentine’s Day is the second busiest shopping day in the world. But since there are so many companies who claim to be worthy enough to provide that perfect gift for your loved ones, as a marketer you have to be creative to get noticed amidst all of the competitors’ commotion. In fact with the right marketing approach even companies which do not sell the traditional Valentine’s gifts can come up with a marketing campaign centered on Valentine’s Day. Uber for example came up with Romance on Demand campaign this Valentine’s Day which would allow you to send roses to your loved ones through the Uber app. The drivers are already on the road, so this campaign did not even turn out to be very expensive for the car company. 

Other examples include firms like Megared which sell krill oil supplements which are basically fish oil supplements. As we know fish oil is very good for the heart and so they came up with the “Protect the heart of someone you love” campaign which allowed users to send free samples of Megared oil to their loved ones. Even financial consulting firms are not far behind. One such firm came up with a campaign on Facebook saying “Do you know how much this Valentine’s would cost you. We can help you plan not just for this but all your future valentine’s. Research shows that people don’t just spend money on their significant others but also on their classmates, parents and pets. Hence, even firms like Pedigree can come up with innovative marketing campaigns to boost their sales.

All this shows that with the right amount of creativity even products not traditionally related to love and Valentine’s Day can use this opportunity to come up with an effective campaign. Another important thing to take into account is the market that you plan to target. According to a plethora of studies men spend almost twice as much as women on Valentine’s Day. So most of the campaigns that you design should be targeted towards making men buy gifts for their loved ones. Not just gender, your marketing campaigns also depends on the age group that you are trying to target as a 55- year old person would buy a very different gift from a 20-year old. 

A phenomenon that has come up in recent times is targeting single men and women on Valentine’s Day. A lot of dating sites and even restaurants and bars are trying to target men and women who are not in a relationship by offering them good company and food on Valentine’s Day. After all, you don’t need a partner to have fun, right. Hence with the right marketing campaigns we can easily make our consumers fall in love with us irrespective of our products, the consumer’s age or relationship status. This makes us wonder, is Valentine’s week really a marketing gimmick. We leave the decision to you guys.