For many, February is a month to celebrate love and romance (unless you’re a KimYe stan 💔), and this year, many couples found themselves celebrating their love from afar.
No prizes for guessing the theme of many of this month’s best digital PR campaigns.
Of course, February is also the shortest month of the year, so we’ll use that as an excuse to get stuck right into the month’s best digital PR campaigns.
Cakemakers, bakerdays hopped on Valentine’s Day hype with a brilliant campaign that leveraged their own customer data – always an effective resource for digital PR.
In this campaign, bakerdays revealed the name pairings most destined for love based on personalised celebratory cake orders. They first had a look at which couples appeared most frequently in Valentine’s Day cake orders, finding that the most loving, or at least the most cake-loving couples are named Sarah and Michael, Jessica and Chris, and Emily and James.
But that wasn’t enough – bakerdays wanted to explore which pairings really stood the test of time – so they had a look at cake orders for more long-term celebrations, like weddings and anniversaries.
The results revealed that Sophies and Pauls are simply meant to be.
It was nice to see that the love of good cake breaks down the walls of heteronormativity, with Dave and Steve, Kate and Anna, and Harry and Jack all posting spots in the top ten. It was equally exciting to know that despite the reputation the name may now have, Karens are still ultimately appreciated (when paired with Johns, at least).
Digital PR doesn’t need to reveal jaw-dropping insights to turn heads – sometimes just a bit of killer design with a couple of drops of nostalgia is all it takes. Computerfutures.com proved just that with its Acceptable in the 90s campaign.
The American IT recruitment firm wanted to highlight how far mobile phone technology has come since the 90s, and did so by reimagining how some of today’s most popular apps would have looked if they existed back then.
TikTok comes in the form of a classic camcorder, Microsoft Teams was reimagined as a fax machine, Tinder transformed into a Game Boy-style handheld console, and Facebook became a classic pocket pal.
People love nostalgia, and people love looking at cool stuff; this campaign ticks both boxes.
Besides the massive, pandemic-shaped elephant in the room, there’s not a whole lot to talk about these days.
Picture it now - it’s summer 2021, you’re finally back at the pub with your mates, catching up on what everyone’s been up to. Very quickly you realise that nobody has actually been up to anything and you’ve all got nothing to discuss except repeating the same conversation about how you’re so happy it’s over. Over and over again.
Don’t worry. Sky has got you sorted.
The TV giant conducted research to find out about TV trends, specifically about talking about TV. In doing so, they revealed that TV is now a more popular topic for small talk in the UK than the longtime chart-topper – the weather.
Sky revealed that 72% of respondents prefer talking about TV to talking about the weather, with 36% declaring that TV and film have been the best things to keep spirits high and conversation flowing throughout lockdown.
41% of respondents noted that they felt TV helped them through a tough time in the past year, and the results showed that British people spend an average of 2.5 hours every month discussing TV plot twists.
So, when you’re next sitting in a Zoom call in awkward silence waiting for that one colleague who’s always 3 minutes late, remember that you’ve always got the Masked Singer to uncover and Drag Race UK to untuck. Bing, bang, bong.
Admittedly, it does feel like cheating to include two name-based campaigns in one digital PR roundup, but OnlineGambling.ca (OGCA) left us with no choice. The Canadian gambling site wanted to know which names have the most potential to become future Instagram stars, helping parents plan the futures of all those newborn lockdown babies.
They looked at existing Instagram accounts and analysed which names had the highest number of followers.
Congratulations, Hannah, you’re gonna be a star!
The data showed that 50 Instagram accounts with an average total follower count of 1,128,000 belonged to people named Hannah.
In second place was Chloe, followed by Sophie and Rebecca. This whole blog post is simply great news for all Sophies.
Jamie topped the list for masculine names, followed by Jack, Eric, James, and Wayne.
OGCA also took a look at which names had the most followers in different genres.
Sophie, once you find your Paul, get into the lifestyle blogging game. If you want your child to be a fitness influencer, you’re best to call them James or Kelsey. If you’ve got big dreams of raising a gaming superstar, call your kid Nick.
Breaking news: that iconic kiss from Lady and the Tramp is no longer the most romantic use of spaghetti in history.
That’s right, just when you thought Alphabetti Spaghetti couldn’t get any more fun, Heinz came through with a truly delightful Valentine’s Day offering; Marry Me Alphabetti.
The idea actually came from a loyal Heinz customer, who contacted the brand letting them know that she’d been proposed to using Alphabetti. Heinz capitalised perfectly, taking the idea to the next level by producing cans of Alphabetti containing only the letters M, A, R, Y and E and selling it as a limited edition offer on Ocado.
At just 75p, it’s a true lifesaver for anyone looking for the perfect proposal. Even better, pair it with Heinz Hoops and you’ve got your engagement ring sorted too.
Of course, it’s not all love and romance, and it’s important every February to show some appreciation for all the bitter exes of the world.
That’s why this Valentine’s Day, hotels.com had an enticing offer for anyone looking to throw some well-deserved shade towards their former flame, allowing people to book a night in a literal dumpster for their ex in what they called their ‘V-Day Dumpster Stay’ campaign.
Of course, they don’t plan on actually accommodating anyone in dumpsters. This has become a popular approach to digital PR – creating an eye-catching or controversial product or service without any real intention of ever manufacturing or selling it – just using the concept to create a bit of buzz.
Those who sign up their exes were required to send in the name and email address of their ex, as well as a couple of sentences explaining what makes their ex so deserving of such a wonderfully vindictive gesture. The unlucky exes were emailed confirmation of their ‘reservation’.
Those signing up were also asked to describe in detail their own dream Valentine’s Day hotel stay, and 15 of the best, juiciest entries were rewarded with a $300 USD hotels.com gift voucher.
As much as we love this campaign, we kinda wish we got to see some of those entries. Give us the tea, hotels.com, you know you want to…
