When I was in primary school, Valentine’s Day was one of my favorite holidays.
There were cards. There was the possibility that her swarm really liked her. And there was the chocolate – so much chocolate.
I didn’t know that the roots of this vacation were little or not at all with my childhood experience. We were never taught that Valentine’s Day actually comes from a benevolent origin Old festivalWhere there was no chocolate or no exchange of cute, red-rosa-colored cards.
So like the hell, we came to a vacation from an old Roman festival that forces many of us Provide no less than $ 185 for celebrations? It turns out that this story is thousands of years old – but we will try to condense it.
Table of contents
How Valentine’s Day started and developed
Old Rome
The roots of Valentine’s Day are quoted by some sources to lie at the old Roman festival LupercaliaAbove all, because it took place every year on February 15 – the day after today’s observation date of Valentine’s Day – and contained some very primitive forms of advertising and matchmaking.
But it was also the old Rome After legendHe wrote a letter the night before his execution to the daughter of his prison attendant, with whom he had made friends with, and signed it: “From her Valentine’s Day”.
Over two centuries later, Pope Gelasius ordered that Lupercalia was replaced by the observation of St. Valentine’s Day of February 14th. This indicates the tone, some believe in the upcoming tradition of exchange of the day “Love messagesPerhaps in memory of the farewell letter of St. Valentine’s Day.
The Romans are also the construction of the idea of Amor – A god of love that is often depicted with arrows, which, as the legend says, add love to those who are hit by them. The Roman version of Cupid was adjusted ErosA god of passion and fertility in Greek mythology.
It seems that nobody is certain when Cupid has been associated with Valentine’s Day, but the fact that both origins have in ancient Roman culture indicates that there may be some very early overlap between the two.
Shakespeare (and Chaucer) in love
When Arnie Seipel explored the history of Valentine’s Day, he found that it was first romanticized by classic authors Like William Shakespeare in the late 16th century and Geoffrey Chaucer in the 13th century.
Chaocer
Dartmouth English Professor Peter Travis quotes Chaucers epic poem The parliament of the chickensThis was one of the first literary references to St. Valentine’s Day or the “Seynt Valentynes Day”, as Chaucer wrote. Such a mention is made Travis explainsIn addition to the line “she now greets sun with your sun that shake this Wintres Wedler over.”
In other words, when we celebrate love in the coldest winter depths – for example in February – it is so heartwarming that summer feels less far away.
Shakespeare
Some literary historians owe Shakespeare to penetrate love into popular culture with its composition of “Sonett 18” – said to be written Between 1593 and 1601 – Aka, “Should I compare you with a summer day?” It is unclear when or how this specific work was associated with Valentine’s Day, but how Chaucer compares Shakespeare with love with the seasons.
“While the summer days fade and fall in colder months,” writes Shakespeare Analyst Lee Jamieson“His love is forever.”
Of course, the day of Holy Valentine’s Day is indicated in the full role in hamlet – Written between 1599 and 1601 – If the character Ophelia recited a song About a young lady experience with the holiday, which contains texts such as “Tomorrow is the Valentine’s Day of Saint” and “Your Valentine’s Day”.
The 17th century and beyond
In the 1700s it was said that Valentine’s Day came from Europe to the United States, which corresponded to the foundation of the North American colonies between 1607 and 1670.
According to the tradition, it was traditionally History.com“For friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes.”
However, this was more common in England, where the industrial revolution started earlier and finally the production of “included”Unusual Valentines (Das) were extremely expensive to import. “”
I learned that an American, Esther Howland, was so fascinated when she welcomed her first English Valentine’s Day in 1847
She was an early entrepreneur and instinctively believed that there could be an American market for these formal greetings in English.
After procuring materials such as high -quality paper and lace from her father, a stationery, she created what has a lot of recognition as the earliest welcome cards from the American Valentine’s Day.
Today Howland is still honored with the nickname “Mother of the American Valentine“With many, their work cited as the beginning of A Multimillion dollar industry. But it didn’t happen overnight – let’s take a look at how your work paves the way.
A short timeline of Valentine’s Marketing
1714
Charles II of Sweden begins to communicate with flowers by assigning a different message to each type. This tradition supposedly Assigned love and romance of the red roseto set the stage for this flower in the later commercialized era of Valentine’s Day.
However, it remains unclear whether a certain brand is responsible for the first marketing flowers as part of the gift spirit for Valentine’s Day.
1822
In England, where Valentine’s Day had been celebrated with the exchange of gifts and cards for many years, the Cadbury Chocolate Company sold Die First heart -shaped box with chocolates.
1849
In Massachusetts, Howland produces a dozen rehearsals -Valentine’s Day tickets and sends them out with her brother to distribute her father’s company during a sales trip. Sa Howland & Sons – in the hope of earning $ 200. Instead, he returns With 25x of this amountWhich indicates a much higher demand than expected.
Here is an example of a map that Howland created at this time:
1850
The first print display for Howland’s cards appears in the Worcester spy.
1866
The conversation songs were developed as Daniel Chase, the founder of Brother of New England Confectionery Company (NECCO), Oliver Chase to use vegetable color Print words on sweet words.
1870
Howland integrates your booming map business than that New England Valentine CompanyOperated from her house via a assembly line that mostly consisted of her friends.
1879
The New England Valentine Company moves from Howland’s house to a main factory in Worcester, Massachusetts.
In the same year the company published the Valentine’s Day verseThe 131 “verses” contained that could cut out the people and insert them into cards that came without greeting – or those with a greeting that the buyer did not like.
1880 – 1881
Howland sells the New England Valentine Company to the George C. Whitney Company.
1888
Whitney acquired at least 10 competitors, including Berlin and Jones, who had become in New York City.The largest manufacturer of Valentines. ““ Ten years later, the company moves to a large -scale headquarters in Worcester Union Street.
1894
The Hershey Chocolate Company was founded and brought what was previously “A European luxury product”To the USA
1902
Conversation candies will be heart -shaped.
1906
American greetings is founded and finally becomes one of the main competitors of Whitney.
1907
The Hershey Chocolate Company presents its Candy product from Hershey kisses. Interestingly, the product was supposedly called kisses Because when a piece of chocolate in the Hershey factory was dropped onto the conveyor belt, it sounded like a kiss.
1910
In January, a massive fire destroys a large part of Whitney’s headquarters. Most of Valentine’s Day products had already been shipped For the season, there are little effect on this specific vacation.
In the same year, Hallmark is founded. In the meantime, in 1910 the creation of Delivery of florists -Hute known as a FTD-which made the remote order and delivery of flowers and offers a way to send them to far away relatives.
1913
Hallmark produces its First Valentine’s Day card.
1930s
The practice of Schoolchildren The impotence on Valentine’s Day and sweets to their classmates has become popular. The producers of Valentines’ sold 25 packs at the age of 25 so that children could buy and distribute.
1948
The de beers Diamond Company started “A diamond is foreverCampaign that send the message that giving high-end jewelry can be used as an expression of love.
1985
In the 1980s, companies such as Hallmark started more Valentine’s Day -related commercials. In 1985, an advertising spot that refers to Hallmark as “The Valentine’s Store” showed all cards and heart -shaped products that you can buy for your beloved people at your locations.
1986
As if kisses were not romantic enough due to their name, Hershey enforced them as a staple for Valentine’s Day with a slight design tweak. The company started with packaging of kisses sweets in pink and red foil Especially on Valentine’s Day.
2004
When the marketers continued to take new media, we saw an influx of high -quality and incredibly highly budgeted commercials marked the holiday from the 80s so far. One of the most iconic and most beautiful commercials was a mini-romance drama called “Le Film”, which promoted Chanel No. 5 perfume.
In the ad, a man falls in love and runs with a starlet, played by Nicole Kidman. In the end, she returns to her life of fame. When she goes down the red carpet, he notices all the things he remembers, including the smell of her Chanel No. 5 perfume.
2005
Valentine’s Day begins to become digital. On February 14, 2005, YouTube, which comes as an online dating site, celebrated his debut. Co -founder Steve Chen still writes his invention as the idea of ”too”Three guys on Valentine’s Day who had nothing to do. “”
2013
Ride Sharing Company Uber is stopping “Romance on request“Enable users send flowers on Valentine’s Day via the app. This initiative would continue to develop with on-demand Skywriting will be available in the following year.
2016
Netbase, a social media analytics platform, publishes a Valentine’s Day Mood analysisMeasure how people deal and discuss with vacation on social media.
A total of nine million mentions of Valentine’s Day were measured, with the vast majority of them mentioned – Netflix. The top haash day was #happyvalentinesday.
2017
In the previous years of Google Doodle, Google used Valentine’s Day to spread awareness of a rare way.
In 2017, a number of Google Doodles emphasized the stories of Pangolins in the days before Valentine’s Day, the only types of mammals with scales, as they give each other Valentine’s Day gifts or seren geneys of their buddies.
Here is an example:
While Google did not have to market itself with doodles at this point, I think that this shows an early example of a brand that used its platform to creatively market another matter on vacation.
2018
Until 2018, Valentine’s Day marketing campaigns have become completely digital, with a particularly strong presence on social media.
With these new possibilities, I think it’s great that smaller companies that do not have a budget from Hallmark can easily spread awareness of their own brands during their vacation.
Here is an example of an Instagram post in which a fine Italian restaurant is highlighted before Valentine’s Day:
While these real dogs imitate Lady and the tramps – especially from the animal lovers on Instagram – encouraged the caption of this post to interact with the brand.
2020
Amazon celebrates his employees who met and fell in love when working for the company. In this sweet short film we follow the love story of two Amazona robots, but the conclusion points to the real people whose love stories were written at Amazon.
Instead of driving sales, this ad takes a moment to reveal the people behind the market that we all know so well. The human touch of this ad miracles for the relationship of the company without promoting something special.
2021
The Covid 19 pandemic Prevents many couples from celebrating Valentine’s Day this year, and the disturbed supply chains make it difficult to produce large amounts of traditional gifts. So companies have to find various options to reach their audience this holiday.
I think this video display from the body shop really has a chord with the feeling of how most of us felt until February 2021 after almost a year at home.
Her attitude to self -love shows a different side of love than the romance that we generally think of when we think of Valentine’s Day.
2022
As we love, it changed significantly in the 21st century, especially with the rise of dating apps. I love this campaign from Haine -one of the most popular dating apps -that recognizes that a growing population of single parents is still looking for love, but it may be difficult if they take care of their children.
This is used as a segment of this audience segment and offers a promo of $ 100 for childcare so that single parents can say goodbye to a Valentine’s Day.
2023
Another turn of Valentine’s Day is growing more and more popular to understand “love” broadly than just romanticism. The national volunteers and the Philanthropy Center (NVPC) from Singapore uses the vacation to promote giving and volunteering for their organization and voluntarily promoting them.
2024 presence
While Valentine’s Day is still a very popular holiday, in which high advertisements spend and exhaust Americans 27.5 billion US dollarsI think what the present marks is that people can see the variety of possibilities how it can be celebrated (and marketed).
For example, this TikTok video shows how to create a sensible appointment for Valentine’s Day with a small budget:
And Dot’s Market, a food chain in Ohio, offers discounts with Valentine’s Day marketing, although the food you advertise has no traditional connection to vacation.
After all, Ubereate continues to make Valentine’s Day as comfortable as possible. Customers combine the advantages of digital with practical gifts and can shop their selection of flowers, chocolates, soft toys and much more to send their loved ones or create a romantic night.
What marketers can learn from Valentine’s Day marketing
As with so many other public holidays, Valentine’s Day has experienced a transition to pop culture, which has shaped the way in which it is perceived, discussed and celebrated. Sure, it is often accused of being nothing more than a marketing vacation for earning money.
But the next time you hear someone as Valentine’s Day as a “Hallmark vacation”, you have an abundance of historical information that you can use to react.
I think the biggest co -marketer is that there are many options for how you can advertise your products or services with Valentine’s Day. However, the key is to stay authentic and offer something that is really valuable to your audience.
From our hearts to your happy Valentine’s Day. I will keep an eye on his continued development.
Note from the publisher: This post was originally published in January 2017 and was updated for completeness.