Dessert brand Gü links social, DOOH ads for music-minded Valentine's campaign

Brief:

Gü, the dessert brand owned by Noble Foods, is running a Valentine's Day campaign that combines social media with digital out-of-home (OOH) advertising in London's busiest rail station. The "Love Notes" effort urges Twitter users to replace the word "you" in the lyrics of popular love songs with "Gü" and tweet them, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
Gü is selecting the best tweets — such as "Everything I do, I do it for Gü," or "I'm in love with the shape of Gü" — to show on a large video billboard display at Waterloo Station, which is used by about 250,000 people a day. Participants will receive a personalized video that's shared on social media and features their public declaration of love on the big screen.
The interactive OOH campaign is part of a broader outdoor and digital effort to support sales of limited-edition Valentine's Day packaging for Gü cheesecake that has embellished lyrics from some of the most iconic love songs. Gü worked with Grand Visual, JAA and Talon on the campaign.

Insight:

Gü's campaign for Valentine's Day shows how marketers can combine social media with OOH advertising to engage audiences, particularly consumers whose media consumption on smartphones has steadily increased in the past few years, as eMarketer data indicates.

The growing popularity of ad-free streaming services has also challenged marketers to find other ways to reach people, including their smartphones and outdoor activations. By urging Twitter users to participate in its Valentine's Day promotion, Gü increases the likelihood the campaign will go viral as consumers share tweaks to song lyrics and proclamations of love with friends, family and followers.

Valentine's Day is a popular occasion for gift-giving, with more than 32 million U.K. residents (61% of the general population) planning to spend money on loved ones, while 9.4 million will observe the holiday without spending anything. Millennials will spend the most of any generation this year at an average of £42 per person, followed by Generation X (£38), baby boomers (£30) and Generation Z (£27), per researcher Finder.

Gü is among the brands that have combined social media with OOH advertising, which not only is a powerful channel that urges consumers to visit physical locations, but also can trigger measurable responses through mobile devices.

Constellation Brands' Modelo beer brand in October unveiled an OOH campaign for Day of the Dead, the annual celebration observed in Mexican culture, featuring a billboard that springs to life via augmented reality. Coca-Cola's Fanta soda brand last year launched a similar campaign that let Snapchat users point their smartphones at billboards, while McDonald's deployed an OOH promotion that included an integration with the image-messaging app.