The Best Valentine's Day PR Campaigns

With Valentine's Day coming up this week, I decided to do a roundup and analysis of some of my favourite Valentine's Day themed PR campaigns over the years.

Probably the biggest takeaway I had from going through all of the Valentine's themed campaigns I could find and picking out my favourites is that Valentine's Day is such a good opportunity for brands to do something a bit different, with Product PR in particular being an extremely effective campaign format to create stories that can use Valentine's as the topical hook to land some amazing media coverage.

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Name a Cockroach After Your Ex by Hemsley Conservation Centre

“Name a… after your ex” is a very common format for Valentine's campaigns. Brands do it every year. Just this year name a cockroach after your ex has been done by Tropical Butterfly House and Birmingham Zoo in the UK, and in the U.S. Bronx Zoo have done it multiple years including this year. All of which proves something I’m a strong believer of - just because a campaign has been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done again (just don’t blatantly copy it!).

I’m not certain if this version of it by Hemsley Conservation Centre which first launched in 2019 is the original one, but it may be the best version of it that I’ve seen based on the online visibility that the campaign created, with the campaign page earning links from 212 sites, including from top publications all over the world such as Daily Mail, CBS News, Fortune, NZ Herald and HuffPost in France.

What I really like about this one besides the obviously extremely effective story side of the campaign is how it’s also a charity campaign with customers able to purchase a certificate of the cockroach named after your ex for £2, and the money going as a donation to the zoo based in Kent.

There are loads of different variants of this campaign, but two others that I’ve really liked over the years are Scrap Car Comparison letting people get the name of their ex spray painted on the side of a car before it gets crushed, and toilet paper brand Who Gives A Crap’s “Flush Your Ex” campaign that lets people send in old love letters from their ex to be turned into recycled toilet paper. Both campaigns are very fun from a storytelling angle, but also fit very nicely with associating the brand with their core product to sit in the mind of customers for a later date when they may need their products or service.

The Love Sausage by Marks and Spencer

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity for brands to produce campaigns that are more on the quirkier side of what they’d usually produce. Product PR is a great format for fun Valentine’s campaigns as M&S mastered with their “love sausage”, a heart shaped sausage wrapped in bacon.

Tongue in cheek products like this will often be fake products or products that are in such limited supply they may as well be fake. This one however was very real and it grew itself a cult following for the five years that customers could buy it. The beauty of it from M&S’ side is that it was a successful PR campaign that they could just roll back out each year and get coverage on the top national news publications every single time, to the extent that even announcing they stopped releasing it in 2024 earned them major coverage.

Ann Summers launches on-demand sex toy service with Deliveroo 'in time for Valentine's Day'

Valentine’s Day is also a great opportunity for brands to show their personality in a more fun way than they maybe usually can while still making headlines. This is a fun example that works as a clever Valentine’s Day story that people will share, but also has a lot of value from a brand point of view.

In 2024, Ann Summers launched a partnership with Deliveroo that could see customers get lingerie and sex toys delivered to their homes 'within minutes'. Pairings that you don’t expect to see often work great for landing PR coverage, and Ann Summers teaming up with Deliveroo is a great example of that in action.

What I really like about this is how it’s a clever tactic to position Ann Summers as the go to brand for sexy gifts in the lead up to Valentine’s Day by using Deliveroo’s brand power to their advantage, in addition to the smart storytelling that evokes a reaction and gets people talking about the story, and thus Ann Summers, a good example of how the brand CAN be the story while still being newsworthy. All this is evidenced by loads of top tier coverage on sites such as Daily Mail, Mirror, The Independent, City AM, and a segment on This Morning (which you can see in the coverage linked above).

Stunts like this are clever because they always seem like a bigger production than they actually are. The delivery service is only actually available in four locations, with just 15 products to choose from, which I bet had very limited supply before showing as sold out on the app (and thus making people think they were super popular and that sales must have gone sky high!).

The Sweet Engagement Ring by Taylor & Hart

This campaign that Taylor & Hart produced back in 2021 just in time for Valentine's Day was such a cool example of how to do Product PR in a creative manner. When you see a campaign that makes you go “aww shit that’s cool” you know you’re on to a good idea. Sometimes the most creative ideas are actually really simple ones in execution, but more complex in terms of the path that our creativity has to go down to get to our destination.

As kids we probably all had moments wearing Haribo jelly rings as actual rings or giving them to our school crush on the playground at lunch. Taylor & Hart leaned into that playful nostalgia by creating an actual Haribo inspired engagement ring.

What makes it work so well is the emotional response that it triggers with people and that’s what makes it newsworthy. Journalists want stories that will trigger emotions and spark engagements. Nostalgia is a super powerful emotion and a really great thing to play into when thinking about the storytelling component of your campaign. Launching the campaign around Valentine’s Day also helps to give it a topical angle making it even more newsworthy, giving Journalists another reason to cover the story.

I’m also a big fan of stories that utilise the “world’s most expensive…” format as Taylor & Hart also did here. It adds another layer of storytelling and emotional psychology to the idea, while also producing an engaging and eye-catching addition to any headline. The impact of that can be seen with most of the campaign’s top linking coverage referencing the price in their headlines.

Florist offers thorn-free Valentine's Day roses - for those who've been hurt by 'pricks' by Arena Flowers

This is another great example of how brands can use Valentine’s Day to produce cheekier stories than they usually would. In 2024, Arena Flowers were offering thorn-free roses to the victims of cheaters so that jilted singletons will not have to endure any more “pricks”.

Stories like this are a great way for brands to showcase their personality in a way that helps not just with positive brand perceptions, but likely with better brand recognition too from a story like this which can be quite memorable. The quotes from brand representatives in these type of stories are also a great opportunity to shape a brand’s personality, as Arena Flowers have done a masterful job of in this story, with their spokesperson being quoted saying “There are enough pricks in the world without having them in your home this month”.

Again, the stunt isn’t as big as it would appear at first glance. There were only 100 available in total during a one week period. Campaigns like this don’t seem to be that common with the digital side of PR, but I’d love to see more Digital PR teams producing campaigns like this! While they may seem like big projects, the executions don’t have to be on a big scale in order to earn great coverage like this.

Clothes retailer offers customers ‘sex guarantee’ by Foul Fashion

This time we’re going all the way back to 2013 for another cheeky Valentine’s Day PR campaign. Here, Scottish clothes retailer Foul Fashion offered shoppers a ‘sex guarantee’, stating they’ll give customers a full refund if their particularly garish clothes don’t attract the opposite sex. It’s obviously incredibly tongue in cheek but it’s a good reminder of how PR can sometimes just be a bit silly and fun.

They also produced a very fun video which you can watch from the link above that does a great job of capturing the essence of the stunt with a fittingly low budget production. Something similar may have been done again since but I think this is long enough ago now that it’s fair game to be inspired by it and put your own creative twist on the idea.

World's most expensive Valentine's day bouquet by Endura Roses

The “world’s most expensive…” is a stunt campaign that I haven’t seen done a great deal recently but is always a good format for earning some quality PR coverage. This is an example that Endura Roses did in 2022 where they created “The Cullinan bouquet”, costing an eye-watering £20,000, filled with 24-carat gold roses and diamonds.

Stunts like this are great in particular for brands that want to position themselves as premium brands as they not only work for creating an outlandish story, but they can actually earn you customers if people that love to display their wealth go as far as getting in touch to order the ridiculous product, especially if you stick the classic “out of stock” and “limited supply only” on the product page (even if it’s fake if someone actually wants to buy it the brand can probably create it and make a nice profit).

Endura Roses also did a similar campaign where Katie Price was “gifted” a £5,000 bespoke bouquets of flowers by her boyfriend for Valentine’s Day, complete with front door pictures of her looking shocked and showing off the flowers with the brand name on the box conveniently facing the camera.

Live Like Romeo and Juliet this Valentine’s Day by Airbnb

Airbnb are possibly the best example of a brand that found a formula for PR campaigns that works spectacularly well on so many different fronts, and then get the absolute most out of it. Whatever season you’re thinking of, you can bet your life that Airbnb have done a “you can now stay in a …” themed campaign.

In this Valentine’s Day themed example of their classic format, Airbnb offered one lucky couple the chance to stay the night in Juliet’s House in Verona. What I really love about these campaigns is that they’re not just a “stay in…” type story, they really spruce it up into a premium experience with the opportunity to enjoy a feast cooked by a two Michelin Stars chef and read love letters written to Juliet.

Along with the great coverage that they always earn, these campaigns are also a magnificent way to position Airbnb as an industry leading brand in a way that no doubt impacts high value brand and commercial metrics.

World's first 'aphrodisiac popcorn' produced for Valentine's Day by Blinkbox

Going back to 2013 again, this next campaign is another example of the silly fun that brands can get away with for a Valentine’s Day campaign. For this campaign video on demand service Blinkbox released a limited edition aphrodisiac popcorn. The popcorn includes three ingredients that are believed to be aphrodisiacs - ginseng, ginger and chocolate.

I love the use of the word “some” in their press release - “The popcorn will be available to some Blinkbox customers as well as selected Twitter users who tweet @blinkbox between February 7 and 12, stating who they would share the aphrodisiac snack with and why”. Again, showing that fun stunts like this don’t necessarily have to be big budget campaigns. The key is a strong (and ideally unique) storytelling hook. Something like this could have been a huge hit in the middle of the “Netflix and chill” trend!

Pheromone Fuelled His and Hers Underwear by GAME

This is another fun tongue very much in cheek campaign for Valentine’s Day, this time coming from GAME in 2014, who released pheromone fuelled his and hers underwear to entice loved-ones away from the clutches of their console and back to the bedroom. It’s a great example of how even brands that you wouldn’t naturally associate with dating like GAME can use Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to land some great PR coverage.

I also like how they’ve used survey data to add to the story by revealing that “one in four gamers (23 per cent) admit they will be tempted to slip away for a ‘console quickie’”. Surveys are often overused for PR stories where better and more reliable data sources are available, but this is a good example of how they can be an effective tool for creating stats that are a bit quirkier and truly unique.

As for the product, there was a “limited number” of the undies available at one GAME store for one week. You may be noticing a trend by this point!

Free Dumplings to People Who Were Recently Dumped by P.F. Chang’s

Another tongue in cheek campaign here, as Chinese restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s in 2024 launched this clever little PR stunt by offering free dumplings to anyone who has recently been dumped.

Customers could earn themselves some free dumplings by texting the chain with a description or screenshots of the breakup to receive instructions on how to redeem the dumplings. I feel like this would work a lot more effectively with a branded hashtag driving social media engagements, but I do like how the giveaway ran until National Break Up Day on the 21st. PR doesn’t always have to be serious, sometimes it can be goofy fun and still land you amazing coverage!

$79 'breakup boxes' to dump a partner with by Never Never Distilling Co.

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity for brands to showcase their more daring personalities, but this campaign takes that to the extreme. While most campaigns take the route of love and romance with a dash of humour for Valentine’s campaigns, Australian based gin company Never Never Distilling Co. went in a different direction, releasing a breakup box to dump your partner with at Valentine’s. Brutal.

The box contains an empty bottle of gin and the message “I can’t wait to not share this with you”. The “cause a stir” tagline next to the brand’s logo is quite fitting too. Obviously campaigns like this won’t work for a lot of brands, but it did earn the gin company coverage on Daily Mail in back to back years after following up the original launch with a re-release and an updated version the following year.

The NAP-kin by Nell’s Pizza and The Odd Company

This final example of a fun creative Product PR style stunt is a more recent one from Nell’s Pizza who partnered with The Odd Company to offer a 'NAP-kin' which will allow the first 100 customers who order after 12 pm on Valentines Day to enjoy their pizza in bed - without worrying about crumbs in their sheets.

Like with the GAME campaign above, they’ve done a good job of using survey data to add context to the campaign by revealing that 4 in 5 Brits hate crumby sheets, but nearly half still love eating in bed. It’s also a really good case study for how campaigns like this can work on a more local level with Nell’s Pizza being a Manchester based business, landing amazing coverage on Manchester Evening News. Because of the unique power of Product PR campaigns, this earns them coverage in a way that is a much stronger promotion for their brand and what they do than what other campaign formats are often able to provide.

The Best States for Valentine’s Day by Bedbible

Data campaigns and your classic index style formats don’t seem to be as popular for Valentine’s Day campaigns I would say, but here’s an example of a well executed data study by sexual wellness site Bedbible who revealed the top states in America a Valentine’s date night.

The ranking uses TripAdvisor data and is based on the number of restaurants rated five stars, the number of hotels rated four stars and above, and the number of restaurants and hotels with reviews that mention Valentine’s day themed keywords such as “romantic”, “valentine”, and “date night”.

I see a lot of index campaigns ranking the best places just based on the quantity of options for things like hotels and restaurants which I don’t feel really rates the best places but rather the places with the most options. By ranking them based on the number of places with reviews above a certain rating, you’re adding a much stronger element of quality rather than just quantity to your ranking, which could also be taken a step further by weighting them as a percentage of all hotels/restaurants rated 4 stars or higher, or by the number rated 4 stars plus per capita.

The Most Common Complainers on Valentine’s Day by Coupon Lawn

Not every great Valentine’s Day campaign has to be centred around Product PR ideas. This is a data-led idea from Coupon Lawn that while it didn’t earn masses of coverage, I really like it as an idea. To reveal which names are most likely to complain on Valentine’s Day, they researched TripAdvisor reviews of popular attractions (quickly becoming one of my favourite data sources to pull audience insights for campaigns from) to analyse the names of people leaving negative reviews for Valentine’s Day trips (based on filters you can choose and mentions of the word valentine’s in the review for added accuracy).

I like how they’ve also analysed the number of words in the reviews and not just the number of reviews to also reveal which names write the most words in their negative reviews and how many minutes they spend writing those reviews - a great example of how converting your data into a different figure by comparing it against something or putting it in terms of something else can make for a more creative, and often easier to understand headline.

Even though this campaign doesn’t look like a huge hit based on the lack of DR 50+ referring domains, it’s good to avoid falling too easily into the trap of dismissing potentially good ideas because on the surface it doesn’t look like they earned a lot of good links. For starters, the links it did earn are in fact good ones and better quality than the DR of the linking domains suggests (radio stations in the U.S. are notoriously lower DR/DA but much higher value than the flawed DR metric suggests). Also campaigns can earn great coverage without links, or the links could be pointing to a different page than the campaign page. Or it may simply be one of those campaigns that was a strong idea but didn’t land because of things like bad timing, a similar campaign launching at the same time, not enough budget, or poor outreach.

Brits set to spend £787 million on ‘virtual’ Valentine’s Day by Barclaycard

Valentine’s Day campaigns don’t all have to be fun tongue in cheek stories. It can also be a good opportunity for brands to showcase their expertise as Barclaycard did here, conducting a survey to reveal how Brits would be celebrating Valentine’s Day during lockdown.

Surveys like this can work extra well when tied together with Valentine’s as the event helps to grow the audience interest of topics bigger than they usually would be. Data around dating trends will always have an audience and be newsworthy, but Valentine’s helps to make these topics even more relevant and topical, helping them to land more PR coverage as a result.

What I also like about this survey is that it covers a topic that had a lot of uncertainty to it, something that I feel is a good starting point when deciding if a survey is a good solution to the problem you want to address. Surveys are designed to reveal how reveal how audiences feel about topics, and the more uncertain we are about those topics, the more new information that the survey reveals to us, and thus the more newsworthy it will be.

Warning issued over 'perfect storm' of scams that target couples on Valentine's Day by VPN Pro

For the right brand, expert commentary can be a very effective tactic with Valentine’s Day being a great hook to make you tips and advice more timely, and thus more likely to land the great coverage you’re looking for!

This is a fab example of how evergreen expert advice can become a Valentine’s themed story with some minor tweaks. Here VPN Pro issued a warning over how Valentine’s Day can be a popular time of year for scammers to target couples via fake travel agency sites. It’s advice that applies all year round, but can also be used for seasonal stories at different times of the year such as Christmas, the start of summer, New Year, and of course, Valentine’s. It's also another great example of how Valentine’s can be a PR opportunity for any brand with the right dose of creativity, even a VPN brand.

The actionable advice in the form of common red flags to look out for is a great way to position the brand as a voice of expertise and authority on a topic, with the media coverage building up both trust and brand recognition with potential customers.