6 Valentine’s Day Marketing Ideas For Luxury Brands
A key date in every retailer’s calendar, Valentine’s Day is celebrated around the world on February 14th every year. It’s a special day when people show their love and affection for those in their lives—and it’s a great commercial opportunity for luxury brands as customers are willing to pay that little bit extra to please their loved ones.
The average consumer will spend close to $192 to celebrate their Valentine, a price tag which increases for those in the 35-44 year old age bracket. While Valentine's Day is most known for being celebrated by couples, consumers also spend around $30 on V-Day presents for their friends and family.
With over one-third of consumers shopping online for their Valentine’s gifts, it’s the perfect time for luxury brands to up their marketing efforts and get onto consumers’ radars. Here are some top-tier Valentine’s Day marketing ideas you can draw inspiration from.
Valentine's Day Marketing Ideas
PUT CUSTOMERS AT THE HEART OF THE CAMPAIGN
We know that luxury customers value authenticity and personalized experiences. By centering a campaign around them, you’re reminding them of their value, and including them into the ‘family’ of the brand.
A great example of this in action is Pandora’s Little Acts of Love campaign. The jewelry brand stepped away from its usual collaborations with celebrities like Ashley Park and Millie Bobby Brown for a more authentic Valentine's campaign. The 2021 campaign featured ads that showed real-life couples doing small acts of love for each other, reminding us that thoughtful gestures can go a long way in brightening someone’s day.
The campaign was born after the brand conducted a study that revealed 74% of people find moral values the most attractive quality in another person. The marketers took this intel and applied it to a relatable campaign that puts the consumers in the spotlight.
CREATE DESIRE
Purchasing a luxury good can go a long way in increasing self-esteem, as treating ourselves creates a sense of excitement and indulgence, which ultimately makes us feel good.
A great Valentine’s Day campaign recreates that pleasure - and that’s exactly what Fleur du Mal are striving for this year. Their V-Day collection encourages customers to treat themselves to lingerie that makes them feel enticing and captivating. The campaign’s empowering message is driven home by their social media strategy, which features intimate snaps and videos that appear to be shot on a home camera, capturing the model’s confidence and desirability.
By focusing on desire, luxury brands can help create an emotional connection with their consumers, tapping into a deeper longing for that feel-good factor that only their products deliver.
BE INCLUSIVE
Love has no boundaries—whether you’re celebrating with your partner or friends. Remember that your customers come from all walks and life, in all shapes and sizes. Being as inclusive as possible with your marketing efforts ensures that they all feel appreciated and seen by the brand.
Versace’s Valentine campaign from 2018 is a perfect example of this. The minute-long ad featured people celebrating joyfully in a fairground setting, wearing Versace clothes and accessories. It evokes the feeling of young love, as starry-eyed Valentine's couples come together in joy. The tagline for the campaign was: “An escape from reality, a modern take on Valentine's Day that strays from the rules.”
Being inclusive and showing a reality through marketing that celebrates all forms of love is essential for growing a wider audience. Similarly, be sure that all your social media and web content is accessible to all, including those with visual or hearing impairments.
ENCOURAGE SELF-LOVE
Self-love and self-care have become a bit of a trope in the luxury world, but at its core, the concept still holds true. This isn’t just about selling scented candles and expensive skincare, but about promoting the importance of prioritizing oneself.
One of the best (and original) self-love campaigns was Niluu's Focus on Self Love campaign, from 2021. The vegan silk loungewear brand created a video that was centered around a self-love date. It showed a woman dressed in Niluu staying home, enjoying her own company, and taking herself on dates.
Promoting the importance of self-love plays on viewers’ emotions, and promotes positivity. Emotions significantly affect memory formation, meaning customers are far more likely to remember a product or ad that makes them feel good.
CREATE FOMO
One of the strongest motivators of a customer’s purchasing decision is urgency. By reinforcing the idea that a certain product or service will only be available for a limited time, they’ll worry about missing out or being left behind.
Valentine's is all about treating your loved one to something special—and what could be more special than a limited edition? Creating a new product (or releasing an existing product in a new pattern or colorway) is a great way to drive sales while also giving customers what they want.
Gucci did exactly that in 2022, with their Valentine’s Day collection. The brand created a collection of bags, pieces of jewelry, fragrances, and makeup that were perfect for V-Day gift giving, either to a loved one or to yourself. The brand also collaborated with artist Ariana Papademetropoulos to create a limited-edition zine, featuring products from the Valentine’s collection.
That same year, other brands like Nike, Fenty by Rihanna, Lay’s, and Burger King launched Valentine’s Day edition goods as well.
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
The best, most successful campaigns are usually the creative ones where marketers think outside the realm of traditional advertising. Most Valentine's Day campaigns can be too on the nose—a lot of pink, red, and heart motifs—but to truly stand out, you need to come up with something different.
Take Tiffany & Co’s tattoo campaign, for example. The online store allowed customers to select and customize a ‘tattoo’ that could then be used as a sticker on an Instagram post, which they could share with the hashtag #BelieveInLove. MeUndies also tapped into user-generated content for Valentine’s Day, asking couples to share photos of themselves wearing their matching underwear sets with the hashtag #matchmeundies.
The unique campaign we love the most, however, is Ted Baker’s Hook Your SoleMate campaign from 2016. The brand created an online game that users could play for a chance to win prizes. The concept was like a fishing game, where users had to try and hook a character. If they landed a catch, they could enter their name and email address for a chance to win a £1,000 Ted Baker voucher.
It was a fun and simple game, which got 10,000 hits in the first 48 hours, and 50,000 over the length of the campaign. The 'Hook your SoleMate’ theme also appeared in Ted Baker store windows in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, keeping the messaging going offline.
Ready to share the love for your luxury brand? Team up with a digital marketing agency like Block & Tam to create masterful, memorable marketing strategies.
