Brands Showing the Love for Valentine’s Day in 2022

It’s that time of year again. Whether you find yourself shopping for your special someone, or are just deciding to treat yourself, Valentine’s Day is always big business. As such, smart and savvy brands are always looking for creative ways to get in on the love.

For some brands – like flowers, jewelry, clothes, and restaurants – it’s easy and natural to make the connection. For other brands, they have to appeal to the emotional connection consumers already have with their products, and find ways to translate that to purchases for Valentine’s Day. To do that, they make creative use of influencers and product placement to get the word out, and earn some buzz even when consumers aren’t immediately thinking about them when shopping for their significant other.

Here are some of our favorite ways brands are making themselves part of the conversation this year.

Door Dash X Shake Shack

As we enter a third year of the pandemic, some couples are still hesitant to go out to a restaurant to celebrate. Enter Door Dash and Shake Shack to tag team yet again, fresh off their Boyz II Men themed promotion from 2021. Centered around the restaurant’s entry into the cutthroat chicken sandwich market, the brands have collaborated to create a site called Let’s Eat Cute. 

Users on the site can upload their own dating profiles, include a selfie, and list out how spicy they like their food to match up with possible dates. Why would consumers participate? Well, participants get a promo code for a free chicken sandwich, for starters. Then there’s the chance to win a $5,000 Doordash gift card. Other prizes include content from TikTok influencers like Rahul Rai and Courtney Parchman. 

This collaboration promises to be yet another hit for these two brands for several reasons. Most notably, it helps Shake Shack get their foot in the door in the heavily saturated chicken sandwich market. And of course, it gets DoorDash more conversions. But on top of that, the promotion could prove to be a tremendous source of first-party data for the restaurant. That kind of information is harder to come by with services like Doordash and its competitors, and new privacy laws limiting tracking on websites. 

Truly

The hard seltzer brand recently announced a sweepstakes encouraging consumers to share pictures of any first date they make for Valentine’s Day this year. To participate, entrants have to tweet proof to the brand’s Twitter account with the hashtag #TrulyVibin. That proof can be anything from a pic from the actual date, to a screenshot of a text making the date. The most creative submissions can win $100 via Cash App, while the top five will make a cool $1,000. 

The brand stated that it is fighting the stigma of Valentine’s Day being geared towards long term couples, so it is encouraging its customers to try and find something new this year in the holiday. To sweeten the deal even further, any couple that gets engaged within a year of this first date will have their wedding paid for by the brand (up to $50,000 in value). The bar would be stocked with Truly, of course.

The campaign is clever because it will create an organic kind of content directly from consumers of the brand. At the same time, it also opens the door for the brand to groom nano influencers from the event. It also is a direct appeal to the brand’s largest customer base: millennials are by far the biggest drinkers of hard seltzers, so Truly is meeting them where they live on social media.

Oreo

Most people think of fancy chocolates when they think of a staple Valentine’s Day gift. But Oreo is putting their own spin on this V-day tradition. The brand created a couples dunking set to maximize the shared experience of eating the brand’s cookies.

Each set comes with two mugs, two sets of tongs (so you can dunk your cookies without getting your fingers wet), Oreos, and a heart shaped cookie cage to store them. In case you’re curious, the mugs even have cute messaging embossed on them. One says “You’re the milk”, and the other says “To my cookies”.

For the couples out there who prefer to avoid the crowded restaurants and would rather spend the night at home wearing their pajamas, this is a perfect treat. And for those who do go out? They can always pick up a set to enjoy later at home. 

Waffle House

A staff favorite here at Sideqik, Waffle House’s Valentine’s day promotion isn’t exactly new. It started in 2008 at a location in John’s Creek, where the manager of that particular location went out of their way to set out a white tablecloth and candles for couples who came for dinner on Valentine’s day. In 2022, many more locations are carrying on that tradition, which has become wildly popular.

What do you get if you take your special someone to Waffle House on Valentine’s day? It depends on the location, but typically it involves salad, steak, and heart shaped hashbrowns, along with some mood lighting and a white tablecloth. 

Reservations fill up for this event quickly every year – some on social media even say it’s on their bucket list – so check the list of participating restaurants and make your reservations now. Just remember to make sure your significant other is okay with waffles and hash browns as a romantic dinner first.

Sideqik Knows Influencers

Interested in finding out how you can use influencers to get your brand into the conversation on Valentine’s day and other special occasions?

Sideqik’s platform allows your brand to not only source the influencers that match your brand’s standards but track their creator campaigns for your products through robust social commerce integrations. We offer an end-to-end suite of services for your influencer campaigns, including over 20+ million influencer profiles that appeal to hundreds of interests. From micro-influencers with intimate access to their audiences with niche interests to mega influencers that are household names with unmatched reach, Sideqik has them all.

Interested in how Sideqik can help you elevate your brand with influencer campaigns and keep you ahead of changes like these? Contact us today for a free demo.