Thanks to the Hallmark brand’s enduring legacy, most people already make a strong connection between Hallmark and the holidays. While Crown Media’s Hallmark Channel is separate from Hallmark greeting cards and Gold Crown stores, they’re all part of the same family, so capitalizing on holidays makes sense for the network.

With the channel’s annual “Countdown to Christmas” growing every year, executives decided to extend the same type of event strategy beyond the holidays.

“Valentine’s Day was the obvious choice,” says Susanne McAvoy, EVP of marketing creative and communications for Crown Media Family Networks. “It’s not just romantic storylines. It’s your relationship with your children or your relationship with your parents or your relationship with your pets— which is nice since Kitten Bowl fell within ‘Countdown to Valentine’s Day.’ We had some really cute creative that called out the adorably cute kittens competing in the Kitten Bowl.”

Last year marked the first “Countdown to Valentine’s Day,” but this year the channel expanded both its marketing efforts and the event itself.

“Last year we didn’t have an off-air media campaign to support it, so we felt that was important to add,” McAvoy says. “We’re doing one more movie than last year, so we’re extending it a bit longer.”

Five new original movies will premiere during the event, which spans the first two weekends of February, with romantic movies from the vast Hallmark library running the rest of those weekends. The one exception being Kitten Bowl III, which aired opposite Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, February 7.

The grand prize of this year’s “Count the Ways” sweepstakes is a Caribbean getaway to any Sandals Resort plus monthly gifts throughout the year. There’s also a “Count the Kisses” game giving players a chance to earn bonus entries.

“We had a sweepstakes with a game last year, but for some reason—maybe it’s the prize of going to the Caribbean—this year we’ve had a record number of entries. But it’s also awareness,” McAvoy says.

Like last year, Hallmark again took advantage of synergistic cross-promotions with Hallmark Cards and the Gold Crown Stores and by featuring talent from the five new movies on the network’s daily lifestyle show, Home & Family. Hallmark also licensed the rights to use Kelly Clarkson’s “Heartbeat Song,” to use in the campaign (see promo above), and the campaign’s official hashtag is #CountdownToValentines.

“We have an off-air media campaign that includes broadcast. We had spots on The Bachelor, Modern Family, and Grease: Live! and we’re partnering with Ellen. We have print ads in Us Weekly and People, but we did something unique with OK! Magazine, something we’ve never done before,” McAvoy says. “We did a complete buyout of their Valentine’s Day issue, so every single ad in the magazine is one of our ads. We have a great campaign running the whole gamut of off-air media.”

Given Hallmark Channel’s dedicated audience, McAvoy hopes “Countdown to Valentine’s Day” will continue to grow in subsequent years, just as “Countdown to Christmas” continues to do.

“Year one of anything is hard,”McAvoy says, comparing this second year of Countdown to Valentine’s Day with the third year of Kitten Bowl. “Every year you learn and build. Viewers come to expect it and look forward to it, so we’re hoping that with year three of Valentine’s Day we continue to create more movies and make it bigger for our audience.”

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