A few days before Valentine’s Day, I was asked to create a social media campaign that would somehow relate back to Travel Manitoba’s new “Canada’s Heart… Beats” brand.I was stumped. How do you tie TV ads about Manitoba tourism to the day associated with romantic love, while also being personal and engaging? Oh, and have it not look like an obvious traditional marketing push?
First and foremost, whatever I came up with needed to be sweet, easily shareable and spread some joy. It is a holiday about love after all. And since V-Day was landing on a Friday, what I did had to create user engagement with little to no effort as that day is usually a dead day on our social networks. (People got weekend plans, yo.)
At around 2 p.m. Thursday (yes, the day before!), I still had nothing. Nada. Then I thought of Ralph. Bingo! Who doesn’t like giving or receiving cards on Valentine’s Day? I would design Manitoba-themed cards and encourage people to share them with someone special. So I quickly sourced out photos and wrote up some cute and fun puns (or as one person said “extremely cheesy.” Ummm, thanks, I think?) and designed these eight cards:
“Canada’s Heart… Beats” Valentine’s Day cards
How did I tie it into the TV ads? Well, that was a little trickier. I ended up writing a blog post that had the cards and videos in it. Was it perfect? Far from. But at least the cards themselves had the “heart… beats” brand on them.
The campaign was a hit! The cards sparked lots of engagement by our followers who shared, tweeted, pinned and liked them. We received some of our best engagement rates ever. And on a Friday to boot! Shaw TV Winnipeg even tweeted that we won Valentine’s Day. High praise indeed!
