Valentine’s Day – A Marketer’s Dream

In my last post I exposed Santa Claus to be a product of clever marketing. This time, I’m going to try and reveal the money-hungry side of love.

We’ve heard the popular saying, “money can’t buy happiness”, but this day certainly shows one can buy love. Valentine’s Day is unequivocally accepted as the day we celebrate love, and this “celebration” naturally involves hearty declarations.

Oh, and a greeting card.

A box of chocolates wouldn’t hurt.

Maybe a bouquet of roses, too?

For many of us, these gifts might seem cheesy and overkill, but the reality is, around 131 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged every year. 224 million roses are murdered, and about $1.6 million is spent on candy on this day alone. And we say we can’t put a price tag on love?

A piece of paper with the words “I love you” scrawled on, coupled with a single rose might not seem like much, but there are corporations that thrive because of a single day.

Let’s put on our thinking hats and understand exactly who is profiting from festivals like this. While days like these undoubtedly mark our calendars as celebratory occasions, some of these simply do not include the same kind of extravagant spending like Valentine’s Day.

You will start to notice an influx of ads and buzz about celebrating this day of love from brands like Archies and Hallmark, showing rosy imagery of people loving each other. But this isn’t anything new. After all, every brand will try and create buzz to sell their products.

But, the unique thing about Valentine’s Day is that such brands have had a huge impact on how we celebrate love. It’s common sense that spending money doesn’t equate to loving. So why is it that on this one particular day, have we made it a ritual to spend money to show love?

Titan will start to advertise it’s dainty watches as a romantic gift, Archies will show happy couples exchanging teddy bears, Nestle will focus its marketing attention on its chocolate offering, all around the time of this season of love. In fact, many broking houses recommend purchasing these company stocks as they’re a surefire way of making some quick bucks. Sales made on Valentine’s Day are expected to show a jump of $6.7 billion next year in the United States alone. These sales include and are not limited to all of what I mentioned above.

Oh, and speaking of teddy bears, here’s a fun fact. Teddy bears were actually named after a former United Sates president, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, after an incident involving bear hunting. These stuffed teddy bears became so popular he even used them as his mascot when he ran for re-election.

Also, did you know that the origin of Valentine’s Day was far from romantic? This day was actually first commemorated for the martyr Saint Valentine, who was allegedly executed by Roman Emperor Claudius II for refusing to convert to paganism. How celebrating martyrdom evolved to exchanging greeting cards, is a mystery to me.

To conclude, my intention for writing this post was to shed light on how many of us are unknowingly compelled to spend money to celebrate occasions. Purchasing gifts, which invariably profit the corporations making them, have become a ritual.

Major industries like candy, flowers, paper, tourism, restaurants and hotels rely on this one day to make a living.

I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, after all, products are made for us to purchase, but let’s not diminish the true value of a festival by comparing how much we spent to how we celebrated it.

If you do purchase flowers or chocolate for your loved ones next time, try and support local businesses who might appreciate it more than anything.

Stay tuned for more posts like this (hint: next one might just diminish the value of an “invaluable”).

Leave a comment if you think you learned something new today, thanks!