Creative Cupids

Also matching people through their taste buds was Unilever brand Knorr, which paired people through their favourite flavour profiles and captured these connections in an online film. ‘Love at First Taste’ earned 2.2bn global impressions, making it the second most watched YouTube ad of 2016. The campaign was inspired by multiple millennial trends – personality quizzes, food-based dating app prompts and unscripted experiments – showing how to combine multiple insights to connect with a specific group.

When Denmark’s birth rate hit a low, Danish Travel agency Spies created a Parent Purchase. This enabled parents to pay for holidays for their adult children and their partners to help them rekindle their romance...and hurry up the grandchildren. Lifting sales by 21%, it demonstrates the value of a funny, headline-grabbing idea combined with smart retargeting.

Demonstrating how to use humour to tackle a cultural tension, Danish internet service provider WAOO introduced a virtual hitman service that could kill your partner in popular video games – all in the name of love. Neglected partners requested more than 18,000 hits, and the campaign reached an audience of 2.28 million people.

How do you get free eggs? Date a farmer. When customers in the US faced rising egg prices, Kraft Heinz brand Just Crack an Egg also suffered. So it partnered with FarmersOnly.com, a dating app for farmers, to give customers a promo code to the matchmaking site when they bought the product. Proving that even the most unexpected brands can jump on the matchmaking bus, the campaign delivered 147m media impressions and a 400% ROI.

Some relationships might be beyond fixing. But the regrettable tattoos that come from them don’t have to be. Petz helped people with tattoos of their ex-partner by helping them find love again – this time with a pet of the same name. The campaign achieved $1.3m in earned media and led to a 12% increase in adoptions. Like Kraft Heinz, it shows how to find an unexpected solution to a pain point.

Fed up with mainstream dating apps? How about one that aims to unite bacon lovers? US bacon brand Oscar Mayer’s 'Sizzl’ united singles with a Tinder-based functionality based on their bacon preferences. And romantic connections translated into love for the brand: bacon sales increased by 5.4%. Keeping the product front and centre, the app shows how to bring superfans together in an unexpected way.