Hallmark puckers up for Valentine's Day: Polaris PR scores with a unique multidimensional campaign that capitalizes on Canadians' love of hockey.

Hallmark Canada is the largest full-line manufacturer and distributor of greeting cards in Canada. Its products are found in approximately 3,200 retail outlets across the country. Although Hallmark sells cards and gift items year-round, four key occasions are critical sales periods for the company. Valentine's Day (14 February) is the second-largest card-giving occasion of the year--only Christmas is bigger.

Valentine's Day presents an unusual challenge. While Hallmarks research indicates that its primary consumer audience is women, Valentine's Day is the only significant time of year when men purchase greeting cards. Due to budget limitations, multiple communication programs designed to meet the needs of different target audiences were not feasible. Hallmark therefore needed to promote its Valentine's Day products with one program that would reach both women and men in a meaningful way.

Hallmark challenged Polaris Public Relations Inc. to develop a media relations effort that would drive awareness during the critical Valentine's Day sales season, appeal to both women and men, and possess the creative teeth to allow for extension into an in-store point-of-purchase program.

In response, Polaris and Hallmark developed a unique hockey-related Valentine's Day program in 2004 called Pucker Up.

Objectives

Because Hallmark already has more than 90 percent brand awareness, the overall goal of the program was to maintain awareness of Hallmark Canada as the company that helps people communicate, celebrate and connect on Valentine's Day. The following objectives were established for the program:

* Improve on 2003 media coverage results by increasing audience impressions by 10 percent, to a minimum of 4.6 million; securing at least 13 percent feature coverage in print media; and reducing the cost per thousand to CDN$5.31.

* Maintain consumer attitudes toward the Hallmark brand by improving on brand awareness survey scores from the previous year.

Solution and implementation

In Canada, more than 4.5 million people are involved in ice hockey as coaches, players, officials, administrators and direct volunteers. That's not counting the millions of spectators, parents of players and occasional volunteers. Research shows that it's the activity of choice for 2.5 million Canadians, appealing to both men and women (women's participation in hockey has gone up dramatically over the past 10 years).

The Valentine's Day theme, "Pucker Up for Valentine's Day with Hallmark Canada," linked this national pastime with romance in an attention-grabbing double entendre.

One of the first steps in developing the tactical details of the program was a December 2003 survey of 1,000 Canadians to determine what people were planning for Valentine's Day, including some tongue-in-cheek questions to add some levity to the program.

Polaris discovered a number of interesting attitudes, including the fact that 40 percent of couples said they would choose to watch a hockey game rather than celebrate the day in a more traditional, romantic way. The results of the survey, along with some "Pucker Up pointers" that played off the hockey theme, were incorporated into a media package and became the basis of the media relations effort.

Pucker Up focused on the fact that Valentine's Day in 2004 fell on a Saturday, the same night as Hockey Night in Canada, the national hockey television broadcast. Thus, Canadians would be faced with a scheduling conflict: Would they plan a romantic night out without hockey, celebrate early on 13 February, or incorporate their love of hockey with romance on the 14th? This potential "dating dilemma" became the focus of media materials and pitches, as well as the in-store materials developed by Hallmark.

The Pucker Up theme was extended into Hallmark Gold Crown stores. A Valentine's Day "Face-Off" puck was created, with "Dinner Out" printed on one side and "Hockey Night" on the other; couples could toss the puck to help them decide what do to with their evening. The puck was sent to key media, including broadcast media, for use as a compelling visual.

In planning and implementing the Valentine's Day program, Polaris faced five key challenges:

1. Reach both men and women with a single campaign. Polaris pulled together a list of target media that focused on lifestyle and sports media. Since sports media don't usually write about Valentine's Day, nor do they typically receive information from Hallmark, Polaris needed to make the pitch relevant and meaningful for their particular beat.

2. Cut through Valentine's Day clutter. Each Valentine's Day, Hallmark must compete for media attention with a plethora of other seasonal products. The Pucker Up theme, survey results and dating dilemma provided media with the opportunity to go beyond the typical story ideas about chocolates and roses.

3. Find the right timing. Media are interested in covering Valentine's Day the week prior to 14 February. While news releases were distributed a little earlier, in January, Polaris had to time its efforts to the media's needs and manage requests for interviews and materials within a short time frame.

4. Succeed without "hard" news. Hallmark did not have any Valentine's Day news on either cards or gifts in 2004 that could be leveraged with media. Polaris had to be creative in securing coverage, because the media program could not be seen as a purely commercial pitch for Hallmark Valentine's Day products. The entry point was hockey and the Pucker Up survey.

5. Manage a tight budget. The budget for media relations was less than CDN$25,000. Although this budget was consistent with programs in previous years, these dollars needed to stretch further by reaching a variety of target audiences.

Measurement and evaluation

The Pucker Up program generated extensive media coverage. Specific improvements over 2003 included the following:

* Audience impressions of Pucker Up were more than 11 million, substantially surpassing the target of 4.6 million.

* Thirty-two percent of the total print coverage was feature articles, well above the target of 13 percent.

* Cost-per-thousand impressions was CDN$1.98, versus the target of CDN$5.31.

* The hockey-related coverage was substantial--close to 50 percent of the coverage focused on these messages--allowing Hallmark to reach the male audience in a major way.

* A total of 76 print or web-based articles were secured, including 37 articles in major daily newspapers (with circulations of 20,000-plus), two web-based outlets and three magazines.

* The Edmonton Journal ran a feature on Pucker Up on the front page of its sports section on Valentine's Day; the story was picked up by the sports sections of other papers in the CanWest MediaWorks Publications network (the National Post, Calgary Herald and Saskatoon StarPhoenix).

The successful media coverage had a positive impact on brand awareness:

* Hallmark top-of-mind awareness hit a new high, reaching 74 percent, up from 69 percent in the same period the year before.

* Consumer preference for Hallmark Card Shops gained 4.6 percent over the first quarter of 2003. Hallmark brand insistence was also up in terms of the percentage of consumers insisting (59 percent) and the average level of insistence (34 percent) compared with the first quarter of 2003.

Shelley Pringle is a principal at Polaris Public Relations Inc., a Toronto-based company that specializes in consumer PR.