Valentine's Day 2017: How public relations and advertising industries maximise on 24 hours of love

Just why do we get sucked in every year?

(Getty istock)

Each year in the third week of January, when the Christmas dust has finally settled, love hearts begin lining shopping centres reminding consumers to whip out their wallets and purses once more to gift their other half or desired partner a token of their love.

The red decorations become inescapable as Valentine’s Day meals for two deals spring up in supermarkets and single people start worrying that they will be spending an otherwise totally ordinary Tuesday evening on their own.

What also happens at this time of year is that card manufacturers, chocolatiers and florists enjoy a spike in their sales. A recent estimate by OnBuy.com suggested £1.3bn will be spent this Valentine’s Day in the UK alone with one in three couples marking the occasion. The individual cost of Valentine’s Day is estimated to be £35 for men and £20 for women with 1 in 10 British men spending up to £75 or more.

Like every other celebration in our Western-world calendar - Christmas, Easter, Halloween – they have become increasingly commercialised as manufacturers specify these times of year to ramp up their advertising, marketing and communications efforts in a bid to capitalise on the feelings of love and joy in the air.

The observation of Valentine's Day has a vast history with the occasion being mentioned in the writings of William Shakespeare and Chaucer. The commodification of the day can be traced back to the past couple of centuries, Cadbury's reportedly sold heart-shaped boxes of chocolates in the 1860s and Hallmark produced their first Valentine's Day card in 1913.

Public relations expert Mark Borkowski told The Independent the first signs of Valentine ’s Day becoming a major consumer opportunity can be traced back to the 1950 and 1960s Mad Men era of advertising, but the “real explosion” of the day’s importance occurred over the last quarter of a century.

“The advertising generation made a big thing of it in the 1950s ... but over the last 20 or 30 years it is absolutely the PR industry which has managed to cleverly exploit stunts, moments and promotions,” he says.

Such stunts include Virgin Trains's 2016 invitation for 24 customers, who were all single, to join them on a train journey from King's Cross to York "to get their love life back on track". This year, Dominos pizza are offering customers the chance to win a 22-carat engagement ring in the shape of a slice of pizza.

The fact that a train company was able to cash in on the day via a rather tenuous pun is an example of the PR machines behind them seeking to gain coverage through a calendar event. Brands which naturally lend themselves to Valentine's Day suh as florists, chocolates and restaurants will rely on PR even more so.

“These brands continually rely on spikes," Mr Borkowski says explaining that these spikes come in the form of days, events and anniversaries.

Mr Borkowski said his past clients, which included Cadburys and Thorntons, said the period from Valentine’s Day to Easter period meant a “very powerful spike” in profits for the brands.

“There is nothing spontaneous in Valentine’s Day,” Borkowski warns saying that some PR and advertising agencies would have been planning for eight months to a year ahead.

With the evolution of new media, PRs have to plan and aim for coverage months in advance: “We will see one of those ‘heart-tugging moments on Valentine’s Day’ and that will be driven and shaped by a PR agency,” Mr Borkowski says.

Additionally, PR agencies can use these upcoming days to persuade their clients to keep on using their services by pledging to maximise on the diary dates for coverage, he says.

While Valentine’s Day is certainly still celebrated and marked across the world, surely the increased cynicism of our generation helps to vent through the consumer traps. Why are we still hopelessly spending our small amounts of disposable incomes on fancy chocolates that probably won’t taste nice and overpriced flowers that will die in a few days? It might be down to the fact that the industries which can now capitalise on Valentine’s Day has expanded.

“The interesting thing for me is that the bubble has never burst,” Borkowski says. He partially attributes this to the fact that now their are more and more industries which can use Valentine's Day as a PR opportunity whereas it used to just be card companies.

Valentine’s Day’s success has also been aided by the increasingly liberal and relaxed attitudes to relationships and dating in society over the past few decades. There is more diversity within our love lives, for example same sex marriage is now legal, this year Sainsbury’s have produced same-sex Valentine’s Day cards for the first time.

“As we increase the opportunities to celebrate [Valentine's Day], the more it can be turbo charged.”

Additionally, dating is now a huge industry in itself with the advent of apps now widely used and enjoyed by single people all over the world.

“Certainly the massive dating industry that came through digital dating and the app s has given it another surge. As one sin industry [chocolate] is replaced by another sin industry [dating], it keeps it all going.”