Puppies, Paris and Lingerie: A Very Social Valentine's

For some Valentine’s is a day of romantic candlelit dinners and cards from secret lovers. For others, February 14^th is a cynical ploy by card companies and a celebration of being unattached. For us here at Talkwalker? Valentine’s is an opportunity to crank up the old social listening tool, fuel it with a mix of chocolates, flowers and lingerie and see what tasty data titbits come out the other side.

We scoured the online world for mentions of the famous saint over the last week to see how we are talking about Valentine’s online and to get an idea of which gifts, brands and destinations are making us feel the love this February 14th.

Have we got that loving feeling?

First off, looking at the big picture, we can see that people are generally pretty positive about Valentine’s day. There have been over 5 million mentions of Valentines over the last week (Feb 5-Feb 11) and over 30% of the conversation has been positive (right). Sure, there is some negative sentiment with a few words like “sad”, “alone” and “stupid” being associated to Valentines in the theme cloud (left) but all in all the Valentine’s big guns like “love”, “romantic” and “cute” are winning out with “beautiful” and “sweet” not too far behind.

Playing it safe

Of course love, romance and sweetness is all well and good but what about that Valentine’s gift? Do you go traditional with chocolates and flowers, play cute with a cuddly toy or take a risk with some lingerie?

Well it appears that chocolate and jewelry are definitely dominating the online conversation around Valentine’s at present with flowers not too far behind. The most popular posts and articles about chocolate include a Valentine’s Day poem on the Merriam-Webster dictionary website and a BuzzFeed video showing a chocolatier tasting a variety of mass market chocolates and giving his (often scathing!) opinion. Although, looking at the top tweet for “chocolate” it seems that chocolates don’t always mean sweet cacao based confectionery…

Brand Love

For brands, Valentine’s is of course a golden opportunity to advertise products of all kinds. But which are the Valentine’s gift brands that are most associated with this day of love? Is it Lindt or Godiva? Tiffany or Cartier? Victoria’s Secret or La Perla?

When it comes to brands, it was lingerie that came out tops with Victoria’s Secret leading the pack with over 5000 mentions over the last week but several luxury brands like Chanel and Tiffany are close behind. Many of Victoria’s Secrets’ mentions have come from fan channels of Victoria’s Secret models on social networks rather than their own social channels. Chanel have a fair amount of activity on their own Instagram channel linked to Valentines but much more coming from fashion fans sharing photos of Chanel products. Other top brands like Versace and Marc Jacobs have had success sharing their Valentine’s products and messages on owned Instagram channels with these two posts the most liked:

Hand-made Heroes

One interesting snippet that came up after wading through the heart filled streams of Valentine’s data was the frequent presence of Etsy, the online market place for hand-made gifts. Whereas the likes of Victoria’s Secret, Chanel and Gucci had around 1000-5000 mentions over the last 7 days, Etsy had over 30,000 mentions with legions of Etsy sellers taking to social media to capitalise on Valentine’s buzz.

From cat-themed t-shirts, to hand drawn illustrations and one of a kind cards, the variety and uniqueness of the goods available on the online market place appear to have generated a high level of discussion online and may point towards people looking more for hand-made gifts than big brand offerings.

Take a break

With Valentine’s Day falling on a Saturday this year, one thing that many of the romantically minded may be thinking of is a weekend Valentine’s break. But which destinations are most associated with Valentine’s Day online? Is it Paris the traditional city of love or Verona, the home of Romeo and Juliet? How about an atmospheric wander along the banks of the Danube in Budapest or a goodnight kiss next to Big Ben?

Out of a selection of popular European destinations, perhaps unsurprisingly Paris comes out on top, just pipping London to the post with three other European capitals, Rome, Madrid and Berlin not too far behind. As befitting the “city of love”, the top words linked to Paris were “love”, “romantic” “beautiful” “sexy” and “hot”. For London, the words were slightly less steamy with “sexy” replaced by “sweet”.

One for the haters

And for those who don’t get all warm and fuzzy inside when thinking of Valentine’s, take a look at how to get involved with Anti-Valentine’s Day in this blog from our friends at HubSpot.

So what are you planning this Valentine’s? A weekend in Paris or a unique hand-made gift? Perhaps even a box of puppies? Whatever takes your fancy, let us know in the comments below (although we don’t need to know too much!)

Photo Credit: kr.hdscreen.me