6 Creative Tips for Valentine’s Day Advertising
If you’ve been following our friends at Maximum Effort for a while, you might know about “fastvertising.” In a nutshell, it means making extremely agile marketing moves to create content that can comment on a viral trend. For Maximum Effort, that could mean turning around a video ad in less than 12 hours to capitalize on a celebrity endorsement.
But what about all those small businesses without access to primo Hollywood talent? With the right processes in place, you, too, can make video ads in a fraction of the time. And if you’re still considering running an ad to coincide with Valentine’s Day, with “fastvertising,” you still have time to make a significant impact.
Many shoppers scramble for last-minute gifts, which gives you time to pick up some important lessons about what makes for the best Valentine’s Day ads to connect with them! Like the holiday itself, Valentine’s Day ads come freighted with expectations. They have to be moving, but not cheesy; romantic, but not overwrought; and funny, but not so funny that the romance is undermined. (Sorry, we just rewatched “Barbie” and America Ferrera’s monologue has been on the brain.)
Here are some top tips for keeping your Valentine’s Day ads appealing and winning your audiences’ hearts.
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1. Focus On Engaging Storytelling
3. Add Dynamic Design Elements
5. Highlight What Makes Your Product Unique
6. Always Prioritize Diversity
Creative Tips for Valentine’s Day Ads: The Takeaway
1. Focus On Engaging Storytelling
This Farmgirl Flowers ad leans in on storytelling through engaging visuals, a captivating voiceover, and smiling people sitting around the table together. Read the rest of our creative breakdown for this video here.
With an engaging story, you can lead your audience anywhere — and they’ll follow gladly. The basics of storytelling include:
Investing in Your Characters
Spend time crafting your characters into people your audience can relate to and enjoy watching. Their goals need to be clear and bold. Your characters need to be appealing enough for audiences to root for them to achieve their goals — otherwise, they might check out before you get the chance to tell them about your business.
Creating Interesting (and Relatable) Obstacles
The obstacles your characters face inform the stakes and tension of the story — and Valentine’s Day ads are all about the challenges. You might see someone trying to find true love in an unlikely place or trying to avoid being bombarded with Valentine’s Day celebrations while just trying to go on a trip.
Want to see these Valentine’s Day ads? Check out 10 Valentine’s Day Ads to Fall in Love With.
If your ad’s main characters can overcome the obstacles in front of them, it’s a happy ending. And chances are, one way or another, your Valentine’s Day ad will have a happy ending.
An Exciting Conclusion
At the end of a Valentine’s Day commercial, your characters will probably spend time together, give each other gifts, or somehow show love for each other. Even if the ending’s a foregone conclusion — or, y’know, the whole point of the ad — you can still make it memorable.
While not every ad is long enough to have a beginning, middle, and end, you still should find ways of distilling the story of a romance to its essence. If you don’t have time to consider the formalities of story structure, remember: storytelling is all about emotion. Choose a strong emotion and run with it!
2. Have a Thumb-Stopping Hook
Catching your audience immediately is more important than ever before. In this Codecademy video, the audience is stopped by either surprise (What is this 1960s scene doing on my television in 2024?) or interest (What Twilight Zone reference is about to be made?). Regardless, viewers are likely to stop and watch what happens next.
As the name suggests, a hook catches your attention and pulls you into an ad. And these are more important than ever before. Your competition these days isn’t just TV shows or streaming content; it’s also the millions of other distractions in the form of TikToks, tweets posts, and Instagram stories.
If you want to stand out from the pack, you have to start with a bang. It could be:
- A provocative title card
- An eye-catching graphic
- A striking image of an actor poised to charm or surprise the audience
Ask yourself: “What would stop me from scrolling on to the next post?” Then try that! Brainstorm and come up with something that stops scrollers in their tracks — whether because it’s funny, interesting, or unique.
3. Add Dynamic Design Elements
Implementing dynamic design is a great way to capture the attention of your audience. For Algolia, they used music (which we’ll talk more about in just a minute), on-screen text, and lively motion graphics to keep their B2B audience engaged.
In a world filled with digital content, many people simply skim highlights, glance at headlines, and make snap judgments. As technology continues to influence our attention spans, it’s critical to immediately grab your consumers’ attention. Now, you have just a few seconds — and according to this study, just one second — to grab viewers’ attention.
When you have limited real estate, you want to get more imaginative and intentional with your video marketing. One way to do this is by adding engaging graphics to compel viewers to keep watching.
No matter what you’re trying to say, consider putting that message in a stylish on-screen text or graphic. Try to:
- Experiment with colors, shapes, and word art to add energy to your spot.
- Intersperse footage with graphics in a cool, rhythmic way.
- Integrate footage with graphics so you’re always holding your viewers’ attention.
4. Don’t Forget Sound
Boost Mobile wants to make sure their audience associates positive emotions with their brand, so they’ve given this informational video an uplifting, joyful soundtrack.
A few years ago, you might have been able to get away without using audio on your videos. On-screen text or captions might’ve been enough — but those days are gone. According to MNTN Research, “The right music drives engagement and solidifies brand loyalty.” In other words, the audio you use is powerful.
TikTok revitalized audio in social media video, causing consumers to expect a sound-on experience. Sound is a powerful storytelling element and can help your Valentine’s Day ad reach a wider audience.
Whether you use a popular sound, a romantic melody, or ear-catching sound effects, don’t forget the power of sound when you craft your Valentine’s Day ads!
5. Highlight What Makes Your Product Unique
In this Kiss ad, they use on-screen text to tell viewers about their value propositions. With this information, the audience knows what makes the product unique and can envision how it might fit into their lives.
Ads have to stand out, which is partly a matter of style and content. If you have a product that’s different from others, you have to say so — quickly!
“Get to know yourself” isn’t just good life advice — it’s also good advertising advice! Your ad campaign depends on a clear, expressible message. If you know what makes your product distinctive and can express it quickly, do that. If you can’t, it’s time to figure out how.
6. Always Prioritize Diversity
Throughout this Samsonite video, the brand uses various clips of different people using their products in an effort to maintain both diversity and reliability.
Diversity is critical in every advertising campaign, no matter the time of year. Representation allows more people to see themselves on screen, which can underscore how serious you are about inclusion and relatability.
While some brands have followed through on their commitments to diversity, there’s still a long way to go. To stay a cut above the rest, you’ll want your campaigns to accurately reflect not only your customers but also what the world in general looks like. You might also want to consider groups of people you don’t often see represented in a meaningful way and explore ways to include them in your campaign.
Creative Tips for Valentine’s Day Ads: The Takeaway
When it comes to Valentine’s Day ads, some are funny, others are romantic. No matter the theme, all of the most effective ads immediately catch the audience’s attention. To create compelling Valentine’s Day ads:
- Focus on storytelling.
- Have a thumb-stopping hook.
- Add graphic design elements, like dynamic onscreen text.
- Don’t forget the sound.
- Highlight what makes your product unique.
- Always prioritize diversity.
QuickFrame is excited to connect brands of all sizes with expert video content makers and video production teams around the world who have a fundamental understanding of the elements that make for a great campaign.
Contact us today to get started!
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