What is TED

“Mark your calendars, TEDx Tirana is happening in May 3.” You probably read or heard this line, especially if you already “liked” TEDx Tirana Official on Facebook. The organizing team of TEDx Tirana is currently going to different universities in the capital in order to explain the purpose of TED and the mission behind it. For those who do not have a chance to participate in one of those presentations, we decided to provide you here with some hints about TED and its history.

At the heart of TED is one line “Ideas worth spreading.” TED is a non-profit devoted to spreading valuable ideas in the form of short talks. TEDx, on the other side, was crated as an addition to TED in order to support initiatives by independent organizers who wanted to bring the TED experience closer to their communities. TED talks cover a great variety of topics from business to science to global and social issues.       

How did it all start?

TED’s history dates back in 1984 when Richard Saul Wurman's observed the powerful combination of technology, entertainment and design. The first TED included a demo of the compact disc, the e-book and cutting-edge 3D graphics from Lucasfilm, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines using his developing theory of fractal geometry. Eventually TED Conference became an annual event in Monterey, California. At that time it served as a way to present inventions.

With time, TED experienced different changes that contributed to its growth in scope and content. Now TED and TEDx are considered as global communities that give an opportunity to people from all disciplines to share the ideas that are worth sharing, make them available to others and thus encourage and motivate discussion.

Hopefully, this helped you get a better understanding of TED. Next time we will share more about TEDx Tirana initiative. Until then, continue following the recent developments on the official Facebook page and …Happy Easter! J

Where does the money go?

Image from seoconsulting.nl

“Advertising” has been the key word in my posts and I have explored it from different aspects. I have written about funny, bad and creative ads; compared advertising in TV to advertising in social networks or talked about the social benefits from advertising etc. This time I will explore the word “advertising” in a more data-oriented way and provide some hints about the platforms companies use for their advertising purposes.

According to a research conducted by Econsultancy.com, based on responses from business representatives, resulted that businesses spend most of their "social advertising budgets" on Facebook-41%. While, according to the responses from ad agencies’ representative, the percentage is even higher: 53% of clients’ total spending on advertising goes to Facebook. On the other hand, companies spend only 18% on LinkedIn and less on Twitter (only 17%). The rest goes to other social platforms.

Regarding the types of social advertising please refer to the picture below:

As it can be understood from the graph above, the best advertising tool among all social networks is considered to be Facebook. Newsfeed ads are actually much more preferred from advertisers when compared to LinkedIn ads or Promoted Tweets.

There is a reason why Facebook rules the social advertising world (as of now).  The reason is, because it offers a platform where creating ads is fairly simple and flexible; targeting is easy and can be done taking many factors into consideration (such as gender, age, geographical area, education, etc.); it can reach a large proportion of the world population (think about 1.3 billion users of Facebook). And, above all, ads on Facebook are not that extremely costly since the platform is still underutilized.  Moreover, the platform keeps expanding its operation further. Think about the acquisitions made by Facebook: Instagram and WhatsApp. These factors have a great impact on the whole social media world and eventually impact the advertising strategies of different businesses.

There is a major question that arises from this analysis. Will the distribution of advertising spending in different platforms change, and if so, how long will that take?

Socially Responsible Advertising

Among creative ads this week, there is one which I find very appealing. Therefore, I decided to dedicate this post to this ad in particular and to social responsibility advertising in general.

“Manifesto-Texting while driving video” is a powerful ad that was launched by the U.S. Department of transportation as a law enforcement crackdown to combat distracted driving. At the core of this ad is the line “U drive. U text. U pay.” The word “pay” in this case serves to describe the fatalities of distracted driving and also the fact that within the new law, a citizen gets fined in case he/she is texting while driving.

The ad itself sends a strong message and the visuals are appealing especially at the moment when the crash immediately “erased” the smile from that protagonists’ face only because she was driving distracted. 

Picture from adsoftheworld.com

It is interesting to see that many of the ads that raise awareness about social problems or issues are created not only by independent organizations, but also by big companies too. In a time when it is becoming a must for companies to promote environmental friendly initiatives, many of them are following such path. The purpose behind social responsibility advertising differs. It might be either for the purpose of doing such an ad in order to gain some positive customer associations with the brand, or because the company might really care about the cause. In the end, what really matters is that something is being done to generate awareness for these issues and some of these ads are indeed appealing and effective.

Picture from adsoftheworld.com

So, more and more often there are ads that promote an Eco-friendly strategy are part of companies’ advertising portfolios.  In this context, one creative campaign, which I personally like, is delivered in print from Pizza& Love, a Spanish company. Under the title “Fight for the last slice” (where the slice represents in one case the Amazons, and in another the Arctic) the company has used a very original idea to promote their “go green” strategy to fight for the Arctic and the Amazons.

For more "go green" creative print ads click here. 

Advertising, dance moves and more in this Diesel ad

Picture from fashiondailymag.com

“Dance your way in with Diesel” is the tagline for the latest ad by Diesel jeans. In fact, the video has many functions and purposes (at least this is how I perceive it). Above all, via this interesting and quite interactive video, the purpose of the company is to promote their new “Jogg jeans collection (an ultra-flexible jean-jersey hybrid)”…and most probably show us some famous dances or some innovative moves performed by world-class dancers.

We get a chance to see different models of Diesel’s Jogg collection worn by these dancers, while they perform different dances and every letter from A to Z represents a certain dance or a special move.  So, there is a variety from arabesque, to rumba and others. And what would this video be without a little bit of harlem shake and some twerking? They have it all in this video!

Of course, I guess Diesel wants to show us that we can make those moves, but probably we first need to purchase those Jogg jeans that “allow” us to better show what we’ve got.

In addition to all that, there is one more thing that Diesel wants to achieve through this ad: encourage the audience to participate in the follow up clip they will do. For this reason, in the end of the video, there is an invitation from Diesel to submit your own clip in the suggested sites.

Visuals got the power

Picture from Carte Noire website

When you think that advertising cannot go beyond making food look so tasty and appealing, two different companies introduce some intriguing food ads. For all those people who like to cook, watch others cook or simply enjoy eating good food, here are two ads that will make you want to either go and prepare a nice meal or get something tasty to eat. In my case, it was the second one!  

The first ad is a great piece of work, a result of a collaboration between Wieden+ Kennedy London and the butter company Lurpak. Via this ad a whole kitchen is transformed through powerful visuals into the universe in order to present the new line of oil and butter. Visuals definitively got the power in this ad and AdWeek does not hesitate in describing it as food porn collaboration between Lurpak and W+K.

If you liked that one and you are up for some more, for desert we have “Rose” by Carte Noire, a French coffee company. Not too different from “Lurpak Cook’s Range-Adventure Awaits” in terms of powerful visuals, this ad shows the whole process of making those little pastries. 

In fact, the Carte Noire is very persistent in all ads. You can check their previous work by clicking here.

Feeling hungry now?…Bon Appétit J

Evian is back in Spider-Man style

I guess everybody remembers the famous “Evian baby& me" ad that hit millions of views on YouTube (more than 78 million as of today) and become the most-watched ad on YouTube in 2013.  Almost one year after the release of the successful “Evian Baby& me” ad, Evian is back with a second ad.
  

From Evian official Twitter account: pictures

The music, the moves and the plot are similar to the first ad, but this time everything is presented in Spider-Man style. Evian probably thought that combining two key elements: the successful plot of “Evian baby& me” and the iconic Spider-Man character, the “Amazing baby& me 2” would gain the same level of success. But, that approach is not working quite well. 

Since when the ad was released on April 1, the criticism and negative comments started to increase. I don’t refer only to comments on YouTube or other social media platforms, but also to articles in online magazines.

‘AdWeek’ wonders on the connection that the ad has with Evian water. Another online magazine ‘Marketing’ dedicated an article to the newest ad under the title “Viral Review: Evian's Spider-Man baby ad lacks originality.” At ‘Marketing’ they consider the ad a duplication of “Evian baby& me,” while the only thing that differs is the presence of the super-hero.

So far, the video has almost 5 million views on YouTube. We still have to wait and see how successful it will be and how high will rank among the most memorable ads of 2014. Will Spider-Man be able to help Evian in this task?  

Facebook vs LinkedIn

Facebook and LinkedIn offer many benefits to users. Since they are two different platforms in terms of their usage and content I try to get the most from them both.

Source: www.smartbrand.es

Facebook is the tool that has facilitated the communication process and I have stronger connections with people there. This is a result of Facebook being a social network platform that encourages people to share more about their personal stories or lifestyles. I believe that is the case with almost all users. Besides that, Facebook has made group meeting arrangement and other communication-related tasks much easier.

On the other hand, LinkedIn is very useful to me because it is a professional network and provides the user with many professional-oriented opportunities. Through the use of LinkedIn and by looking at my connection’s examples, I learned how to better present my CV. Second, there is a great platform to track different companies that are of interest to me and get exposed to job opportunities.

Third, I can join many forums where different topics are discussed and I can become part of them. What is interesting about these forums is that the topics are up-to-date and the members there are professionals from different areas who share real life experience from their businesses. Thus they add more value to the discussion.

Last but not least, what I like about LinkedIn is that many of my connections there share very interesting business, finance, marketing, politics etc. related articles that they do not share on Facebook for example.

Overall, depending on the purpose both Facebook and LinkedIn are valuable to me. What about you? Which online platform offers you the most valuable features?

Celebrity Advertising: past issue or existing trend?

As a mentioned in my last post, this time I would write about celebrity advertising and what is the trend recently related to this issue. One question that is somehow inspired by the recent advertisements is related to the importance of celebrities’ presence in advertisements. Has this importance diminished or is it still on the same level?

My purpose here is not to give a definite answer and I believe that there might not be statistics that support certain conclusions about this topic. I will give some examples and raise some questions in the end, because I believe that it is an interesting topic based on which can be elaborated further discussion.

So far, among the most viral ads for 2014 are videos that human empowerment. This is not the case only with ads that depict social causes or similar issues. Budweiser is an example of a company that relies on the power of horses and dogs to make their ads more appealing. Probably you remember their famous Super Bowl ad “Puppy Love.”

In addition, some of the most successful and viral ads for 2013 feature non-celebrities. I can mention here Evian’s “Baby& me” ad that currently has more than 73 million views. 

Dove is also focusing more on real life issues in their advertising campaigns. This is the case with “Dove Real Beauty Sketches” or “Selfie.” However, there are companies that still rely heavily on celebrity advertising. For example, H&M has recently used two celebrities in its advertising campaigns. The first one is David Beckham as a representative of the Autumn male clothing collection and the other one is Miranda Kerr who is the representative face of H&M’s spring collection.

Source: H&M Twitter profile

While H&M is using this strategy, many other fashion companies especially through the use of social media strategies are trying to encourage user generated content. Companies like Coach are using the power of colorful pictures to make their customers attached to their brand.

Source: "Coach admires the view from above" article

So, my question is: are these recent trends an indicator that celebrity advertising will lose the power it has previously when companies used them even as brand advocates? Will the increased use of social media strategies and the empowerment of user-generated content affect the effectiveness of celebrity advertising? You can share your opinion below. Let me know what you think. J

Human empowerment

Age, happiness, determination were at the heart of this week’s top ads as voted on AdWeek. What is common about these ads is the focus on real life stories and challenges that key protagonists face is their day-to-day lives. Part of the list is “Dear Future Mom”, a beautiful ad to which I dedicated a post last week.

Another ad you probably had the chance to see in social media platforms this week is an inspiring video by Walmart. 'Work Is a Beautiful Thing: Meet Patrick” shows the story of a brave young man that does not give up despite the challenges he faces in life. He beautifully describes struggle and his reaction to them this way: “my whole life people have been telling me that I have a learning disability. I guess they are right, because I never learn how to give up.”

Source: Save the Children UK, official Facebook page

Another thoughtful ad was introduced this week“StephenHawking: I’m giving my voice” by Save the Children UK. This TV ad was launched as part of #SaveSyriasChildren campaign and is an appeal to everyone to contribute for the big cause of helping children in Syria.

Last, but not least “Love Later Life,” an ad by Age UK. This foundation is UK’s largest charity and is devoted to helping people that have challenges in making the most in their later life. Every word said in this ad is a word of wisdom that delivers and strong message “No one can predict what is lying in front, with a future more challenging than ever before, so enjoy the adventure”   

To conclude, I would like to present some questions that are inspired by these ads and some other recent ones. Lately, I have seen many ads that are non-celebrity oriented. And, I do not refer only to ads that promote social causes, but also to ads from big, successful companies like Coke, Schwarzkopf, Budweiser etc. Could this be a sign that companies are shifting towards a different approach with advertising? Is the importance of celebrity advertising diminishing? I will try to give answer to those questions in my next post. J

Dark humor or...?

So far my posts spotted good, interesting, funny and successful ads that have generally created positive buzz. Well, this time I decided to write about an interesting (in its way) advertising campaign. These series of ads will make you wonder “what were these people thinking?” And, by “these people” I refer to both the advertising agency in charge and the company itself that agreed to represent its brand this way.

Source: Burlington France, Facebok page

Burlington Industries is a Greensboro, N.C.-based textile manufacturer that licenses Burlington Socks to legwear maker Kayser-Roth for the U.S. market. In October, they released three promotional ads which were created by the French advertising company Pain Surprises.

Among the three ads, the one titled “Burlington: Can you sock me?” draw more attention. The video features a 7-8 year-old boy who asks his mother “can you sock me?” Many online magazines referred to it as “Disgusting Ad Jokes About Incest, Child Abuse” or “Apparently, Some People Think Child Abuse Jokes Will Sell Socks.”

One of the representatives of Pain Surprises said on an interview that “the ads were created to be spread virally.” The ads did not reach that level of viral success; however the company certainly managed to create some negative buzz via this campaign. AdWeek dedicated a whole article to this campaign under the title “Is This Obscure European Sock Company the World's Worst Advertiser?”

Surprised enough? Oh wait, there is more. The other ad does not fall behind. It features a dying old man in a hospital bed. When the young man (most probably his grandson) ask him if he is going to die, the old man starts weeping. Then, the young man notices the nice socks his grandpa's is wearing. So, he decides to stop grandpa's agony by pulling the plug. Unfortunately, the video is no longer available. Probably, due to the "appropriate" content the company decided to remove it from all online platforms. 

Below you can find the third ad. How far can your imagination go? Well, be prepared, it will exceed your expectations of “a painful surprise.”

So, after watching them you can probably answer my question. Is there anything good about these ads? 

#DearFutureMum

“Saatchi Turns an Email Into a Beautiful Ad for World Down Syndrome Day” was the headline of an article I read on Adweek two days ago. So, I became curious and as I always do, I scrolled down to watch the video without paying much attention to the article’s content. 

After two minutes and 30 seconds (the length of the video) I realized I was in tears. I shared the video on my blog that day and I thought I should dedicate today’s post to this ad, since “beautiful” is too simple a word to describe this video.  I believe it is overwhelming and most importantly sends a powerful message.

Source: CoorDown Official Facebook page 

The agency Saatchi & Saatchi came up with the idea for the video after they were contacted by CoorDown, an association representing people with Down Syndrome in Italy. On February, CoorDown received an email from a mother-to-be who had found out that her baby had this syndrome and shared her fear about the future life of her child.

The video replies to this mother and other mums who continuously ask themselves the same question “What kind of life will my child have?”  The message: Your child will be able to do many things, integrate in the society, and most importantly, he/she will be happy.  

In such cases, when advertising focuses on sensitive causes and delivers powerful messages like this one, it has the power to do something different. It can motivate people and encourage them to think positively. 

Saatchi & Saatchi has cooperated with CoorDown for three years in a row. Click here to go to CoorDown YouTube channel and watch the ads from the previous years. 

Facebook advertises its value

It seems like Facebook, the platform that developed significantly in a short period of time does not have to spend time and money to advertise its services. And that it true! Having more than 1.3 billion active users that perform daily activities on this platform, Facebook does not really have to struggle to attract users, thus they do very little in promoting the site.

However, just to remind us about the idea behind Facebook, the company assigned Wieden + Kennedy to create their latest ad campaign. The campaign consists of three short videos that highlight different lifestyles and how you can achieve things through posting on your Facebook profile.

In one of the videos, “Couch Skis,” the protagonists are a group of young people that get together and experiment couch skiing. On an article on mashable.com they describe this movement as a graduation of Facebook “from chairs to couches.”

On the sequence “Tango”, a benefit from this social platform becomes the center of the video. You want to learn something new? Your Facebook friends can you help you find the right place.

The content of “Runner” is not that different. Striving to motivate yourself and finally take the initiative to implement your plan? The community of friends online is there to give you the inspiration you need.

A common characteristic of the three ads: storytelling without many words. All the videos conclude with the 'like' sign.The message being delivered: Facebook makes good moments in life possible, in just a few clicks. 

February, you got it right

This past month we have seen a variety of advertisements. Besides some of the most impressive heartwarming and bloody Valentine ’s Day ads, this February served a variety of other ads that went viral: hot and cold ones, crazy and funny ones.

One of those was Neuro Sleep TV ad that gained a lot of popularity. Funny, hot and provocative moments delivered by Neil Patrick Harris (the guy that never fails to make you laugh) who sings throughout the whole video to seduce sleep Neuro Sleep drink.

A cute and funny ad was launched by Three, a British mobile network. #SingitKitty campaign features Jolie riding her bicycle and her cat, who sing along to Starship’s 1985 rock song “We Built This City”. The ad become viral mainly in UK. So far it has reached more than 4 million views on YouTube.

Source: Three

Coke also made a good appearance on the social media with two interesting ads about which you can read in an earlier post of mine.

Last, but not least, “Would you help a freezing child?” This is my favorite ad of this month. It is a heartwarming video filmed out in the cold in Norway.  The idea was implemented by SOS Children's Villages charity that placed the 11-year-old boy Johannes on a bench in a bus stop in Oslo. The experiment, designed to see the reaction of strangers to toward the little boy who was not wearing a jacket, was part of the campaign to collect warm winter clothes to be sent to children in Syria. The reactions of people are quite impressive. You can learn more about the campaign by clicking here.

Online data management is easy

Hello friends J

This time I will describe an online niche social network and some of its characteristics, so I hope you will find it useful. Diigo, which stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff,” is basically a tool that offers a variety of features that facilitate personal knowledge management. It also has the characteristics of a research tool and knowledge-sharing community. 

Initially, the site was launched as an online bookmarking site, now you can use Diigo.com to: store links, pages, notes, etc. in the Diigo library, highlight text on webpages, add comments to highlights, add sticky notes, save bookmarks and organize them via tags, and also share annotations and bookmarks with the people you want.

Currently, they have 7 million registered users and still counting. The data shows that the site has 183,612 daily visitors and 501,884 page viewers daily. The site can be accessed anywhere; however the majority of their users are located in India, USA and United Kingdom. While the main language used is English, their service is also available in French, German, Chinese and a few other languages.

Source:diigo.com

But how do they generate profit? Diigo.com currently operates on a freemium model, allowing unrestricted bookmarking while charging for the ability to maintain unlimited page caches and screen shots.

The site is very useful especially to people who collect and use a lot of online information. Users have the opportunity to choose between keeping the information personal and making it available to a selected group of people. Among the various features this site offers, I consider Diingo Educator as very helpful. It is like a platform where the teacher creates an account and the students are added to the group. So, everybody can share their research or annotated bookmarks with the classmates. It also works well in case of small group projects.  I think the site is helpful to anyone. 

The only problem is that the services they provide might be a little similar to some other sites; however they constantly launch a new feature or service in order to differentiate and make the user’s experience more satisfactory.

Google has it all

Many of you have probably heard about different types of online advertising compensation methods such as PPC (Pay per Click) – which means that advertisers pay for each click on the ad; CPV (Cost per View) – advertisers pay for each view of the video ad; CPM – advertisers pay for every one thousand views of their display ad, and so on. These compensation methods on the other hand correspond to the online advertising methods such as Google AdWords, Google AdSense, display advertising, etc.

In 2013, a new compensation model was launched: PPG (Pay per Gaze). It was actually patented on 13th August 2013 by the USA Patent Office and “it involves charging advertisers if the user looks at an ad – online or offline – while wearing a pair of glasses”. Can you imagine how revolutionary this method can be in the field of advertising?

Probably, by now you may have guessed that I am referring here to Google Glasses. And it is not just a product; a whole line of accessories for sale is introduced. For more details on this innovation you could also check “The Wacky World of Google Glass Accessories.” 

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Some might be skeptical about the effects of this futuristic product in the advertising world in the near future, but Google is prepared for that. In the patent, there is a paragraph where is stated that Google could try to charge companies if the wearer happens to see an ad while wearing the device. And, there is even more to that…

“Pay per gaze advertising need not be limited to on-line advertisements, but rather can be extended to…billboards, magazines, newspapers, and other forms of conventional print media. Thus, the gaze tracking system described herein offers a mechanism to track and bill offline advertisements in the manner similar to popular online advertisement schemes.”

So far, there has not been an attempt by advertisers since the product is brand new. However, what we can say now is that Google never ceases to surprise us and that technological developments are definitively making things easier for advertisers.

Coke strikes again

We all love social media and it is great because of the benefits we get, however becoming addicted to it can be troublesome. So, this Coca-Cola ad is created for the purpose of addressing the issue and the solution they propose is: Social Media Guard. This product is simply a dog collar, but for the purpose of this ad, the collar is human-sized and has some visuals that relate to Coke brand. What can this product do? As described in the ad: “It takes the ‘social’ out of media and puts is back into your life.”

Effective? Well, that can be questionable. However, besides the funny red-collar solution, the main idea of the campaign is to increase awareness about the impact of social media usage in our social lives. And of course… to remind us that real moments are better when shared with Coca-Cola.

Just a couple of days after the launch of “Social Media Guard” ad, Coke introduced a new one. This time, focusing on what Coke does best: delivering positive messages that spin around happiness. Through this ad, Coke invites us to “Choose Love Over Like” in our lives since eventually we will reach the ultimate goal: happiness. 

Source: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/

While John Newman sings “Love me Again”, there is a number of things going on in ad that suggest that we should love things rather than like them, follow our instincts, color our lives. Last but not least, Coca Cola Light’s image appears in the very end of this ad so that we get reminded of one simple thing: besides other things in life, we also have to “drink what we love.” 

A smart move

Many of you have probably heard about or seen the recent ads by Dove which focus on one problematic aspect: how people (especially women) define beauty. All these ads are part of a bigger picture: Dove’s 
“Real Beauty” campaign. The campaign was initially launched in 2004 and since then, every year the company releases a new ad or more as part of this campaign. 
All of them have one central message: “You are more beautiful than you think!”

One of the most famous ads is “Dove Real Beauty Sketches”, released in 2013, where an experienced FBI forensic artist makes two different sketches of a series of women. One sketch is based on their self-description and the other based on other people’s 
description. The difference is remarkable and serves as a reminder for women to change their perception about their appearance because they are more beautiful than they think.  Only one month after its release, the video was viewed 114 worldwide, uploaded in 25 different languages to 33 of the brand’s YouTube Channels.

This year, Dove introduced a short film at the Sundance Film Festival called “Selfie”which brings together teenage girls and their moms to take selfies and try to overcome their insecurities about their looks. That's rights, they want to embrace the power of selfies!

But, is Dove’s really trying to change the way people (especially women) perceive beauty or is this just a smart way to attract customers and their intentions are purely materialistic from this campaign? The intention is not very clear, but Dove has certainly made a smart move with the “Real Beauty” campaign. Why?

First, they have understood that their audience needs are: to feel beautiful and a need to be accepted by the society for the way they look like. The messages in these ads are crafted in a way that these two needs are addressed. As a result, the reactions of the audience were very positive. So, they are giving to their audience what they want to hear.

Moreover, with the introduction of the “Real Beauty campaign” they have shifted the brand positioning in the market. Before they used to sell soap and similar products, now they sell “restored self-esteem.” Many people are more familiar with their ads than the products they offer.

Source: www.dove.us

In general, there are similar campaigns produced which address social issues with the tendency to improve problematic aspects in the society; however they fail to prolong their impact. Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign is an example which demonstrates that if you invest in an innovative idea, such initiative can become profitable for the company and who knows… maybe impact the society too. 

Valentine in the eyes of advertisers

Now that Valentine’s Day has passed is time for the aftermath of the issue-related advertisements. While for many people Valentine’s Day is another day to express the feelings towards their loved ones, for companies is yet another occasion to create buzz around their brand and for advertisers to demonstrate their creativity. There were all sorts of reactions towards this year Valentine's ads.   

It is definitively easy to make bad ads and there are many out there, but it is not that easy to make good ones. However, if they are good, they get viral fast. This is the case of Schwarzkopf’s ad revealed almost a week ago. It is not clear the connection between the product being advertised and the ad itself, however it is beautifully created to deliver the message: “are the little things that make us fall in love with someone.” Until now, the ad has reached more than 6 million views on YouTube. “You- A declaration of love” is definitively the most romantic ad so far this year for one simple reason: it presents the importance of details in a relationship. 

Source: Schwarzkopf YouTube channel

While many companies around the world were prepared to say Happy Valentine’s Day through TV or print ads, this year, the Flower Council of Holland brought Valentine’s Day to another level. In case of love at first sight? Flower Council of Holland was prepared to give a hand to people walking in the streets of Paris who all of a sudden would experience the spark of love. 1500 little red boxes with single red roses inside were placed around Paris for this purpose. Quite an interesting idea in case of "love emergencies." 

Source: http://www.adweek.com/

But, besides the classic love appeals with flowers and sweet gestures in ads , there were other ads that delivered more extreme messages this Valentine. The producers of “Dumb Ways to Die” were back this Valentine with a short story-telling video. The character in “Dumb ways to die” who sold his two kidneys on the Internet is in the center of the video "Dumb Ways to Valentine," but this time he rips off his heart to give it to his partner. The message is a little too extreme “Your Valentine is worth every sacrifice,” but the ad in general is appealing as it suggest people to be safe around Valentine’s Day… and of course trains. The video was posted 2 days before Valentine's day and so far has more than 2 million views. 

IKEA's Singapore ad agency people had also some playful ideas this Valentine. Never thought of a chair delivering a Valentine’s Day message? Well, one chair cannot do much, but two can certainly get in to some action. IKEA’s chairs said “Happy Valentine’s Day” this year in a unique way as shown in the print ad below. 

Source: adsoftheworld.com