The Brief

In Japan, only women give gifts to men on Valentine’s Day. Giving Godiva is considered premium and polite. But this also posed a problem as Valentine’s Day had become ritualized and rather formal, lacking emotion and romance. While Godiva is well known and respected, consumers had lost the meaning of the love and emotion the brand was meant to represent. Our challenge: inject emotion into the brand & passion into the act of giving in order to increase awareness & sales despite a flat market, engaging not just Godiva’s core target, but potential consumers as well.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

To break through the indifference and formality, we devised a way to get women to hug in public. We got them to hug a specially developed mannequin that measured their hug quality! A custom designed hugging booth appeared in various locations leading up to Valentine’s Day. We hoped to get 600 women participants. Each hug was photographed, rated and each hugger received a performance-rating certificate. All was uploaded onto their personal timeline, the campaign Facebook page & microsite for all to see. Sites contained daily updates and activities to stimulate participation, including an app allowing people to send virtual hugs.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

6,300+ women hugged the mannequin, with 37% sharing their experience via Facebook, another 31% shared the event via other SNS. Awareness of the Facebook page was astounding: a 130% engagement rate, 6X the amount of other Food & Beverage pages. 34,000 users created a story for sharing, resulting in 3.5 million unique Facebook users seeing the content. Despite only being a 3 week campaign, earned over 7,000 Facebook Likes, and over 5,000 Google search results. TV shows, web news and blogs picking up the story, earning $1.5 million in unpaid media. Sales increased by 8.5% despite the stagnant market.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The thinking behind the campaign is simple: Make the participation component irresistible. It breaks through the cultural status quo of Valentine gift giving in Japan in a playful way and encourages people to actively participate in the real world and online. There was an opportunity to inject some unexpected emotional value into Valentine’s Day by asking women to express their feelings in an unusual physical way, by hugging the mannequin in public and sharing their experience via social media. This campaign reflected the emotional brand values Godiva wanted to achieve, impacting popular culture in a fun and participatory way.