Necco is a great, classic American company. The Sweethearts brand has been a best-selling Valentine’s Day candy for decades, evolving and remaining culturally relevant. Still, we felt there was an opportunity to grow and revitalize the brand by presenting it in a nontraditional way, while adhering to the brand’s core identities associated with conversations, sharing, and fun. We sought to identify an engaging, modern means for bringing the Sweethearts experience to life for Valentine’s Day, 2014.

'Tweethearts', was a social solution that allowed users to create customized Sweethearts candies using Twitter. The sweethearts.com site invited users to send a personalized tweet to @tweethearts. Users then received a tweet with an image showing the words from their tweet on Sweethearts candies. They could then order a 1-lb. bag of candies for delivery, share the image socially, or both. The site also featured an original song and video celebrating the gift idea.

First the @tweethearts handle launched, after thorough testing of the automated image response. Simultaneously, tweethearts.com went live, providing information and allowing users to purchase their personalized candy. With a $0 media budget, we were strategic, using a social media outreach plan and PR to drive activation. We identified influencers likely to engage (because of an affinity for candy, romance, or ties to Necco’s home city of Boston), and sent them bags customized to their personality. We looked for opportunities, like the trending Twitter hashtag “#RejectedCandyHearts”, through which we engaged with users (turning their #RejectedCandyHearts into images) — including a BuzzFeed writer.

Over 2,000,000 impressions, with a media budget of $0

2,464 users have created a Tweetheart — almost 2.5x our goal of 1,000.

1,405 retweets

Average time on site: 50 seconds

Celebrity Mindy Kaling posted a #Tweetheart on Instagram and Facebook.

Inspired by a #Tweetheart we sent, BuzzFeed organically picked up the program and featured it on its homepage. The article captured over 53K total views.

Twitter’s official advertising account referenced #Tweethearts as an example of best practices for brands on Twitter. The program generated significant press coverage, including BuzzFeed, Agency Spy, New York Times, Forbes, Boston.com, Yahoo, Digiday, Media Post, and others.