Love is in the air, and brands are trying to bottle it up and market it.
As Valentine’s Day ushers in a flurry of pink-and-red-hued campaigns, companies like coffee brand La Colombe, fitness subscription platform ClassPass, and sports club CityPickle are taking the romantic vibes a step further by hosting their own singles and dating-focused events. The events aren’t just tapping into consumer interest in experiences: Brand marketers say they view the dating space as a way to foster their own relationships with customers while putting their core values on display.
“It’s about building connection. It’s about building community,” Mary Cannon, co-CEO at CityPickle, told us. “Cupid might be in the air particularly, but it’s a priority for us at CityPickle to build and promote connectivity.”
Playing Cupid
CityPickle’s singles events are one of their most popular types of events throughout the year, Erica Desai, the other co-CEO at CityPickle, told us, and after hosting dozens of singles-focused events so far, the brand’s Valentine’s event quickly sold out—although she and Cannon clocked a slight disparity in how quickly tickets sell.
“The women’s tickets sell out instantaneously. In fact, we have a wait list that’s longer than the number of tickets that we offered,” Cannon said. “The men typically do not sell out immediately.”
That difference is key to how CityPickle designs its singles events, and Cannon said that they sell designated women’s and men’s tickets so both demographics are represented.
“It’s these little things and this extra thoughtfulness that we hope facilitates a really great time, because I think it’s the pre-planning that goes into a mixer like this that really helps contribute to the success,” Cannon said.
This year, La Colombe targeted Valentine’s Day for the first time, hosting “Love Over Lattes” singles happy hours in its cafes in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago and partnered with local influencers to host and facilitate the events. Choosing the right influencers—which included Street Hearts’ Tiff Bairas, Free Dating Advice Philly’s Kate Catinella and Sam Stanton, and Happier Hours’ Kate Lazarski—was important to serving each city’s audience, according to Kathryn O’Connor, CMO at La Colombe.
“As we wanted to create a deeper, more fun, meaningful experience in each market, we were like, ‘Who would be the right partner to tap in each market?’” O’Connor told us. “So we talked to a bunch of people and developed relationships with both the folks in Philly and the one in Chicago.”
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ClassPass’s in-house team hosted an exclusive singles workout class at Barry’s for its entry into the holiday, and since the fitness platform already partners with studios, it worked closely with the Barry’s team to enhance the experience, Sam Madrid, ClassPass’s lead marketing operations manager, told Marketing Brew.
“For this, we’re looking for partner elements, or like, ’How can we get folks to engage in class?’” Madrid said. “So you really need the instructors to buy in for that, because you want them to really hype up the event, encourage folks to talk in between sets and things like that.”
Maxine Williams, the founder of We Met IRL, an event brand that focuses on speed dating and mixers, said that in the three years she’s been staging dating events, she’s learned that good relationship-building events for brands require a close understanding of what customers actually want.
“Just make it make sense,” WIlliams told us. “[For example,] maybe it’s like, ’Oh, a lot of married couples go to the YMCA,’ so they’re having a marriage[-focused] Valentine’s event. That makes sense. They know their customer base.’”
Mutual relationships
Tapping into the dating industry can produce some swoon-worthy results. La Colombe’s largest cafe space in Philadelphia netted 475 RSVPs in “a very, very short period of time,” O’Connor said, and both New York and Chicago’s 100 RSVPs quickly filled up and spilled over into waiting lists. CityPickle’s singles’ events, meanwhile, have grown so popular that it branched out this year, working with the pickleball league Queer Pickle to host a queer-focused Valentine’s event.
Even before the brand’s first singles event, La Colombe was already involved in love stories, O’Connor said, so stepping into the dating scene was a natural next step.
“It is not uncommon for people to write into us via social or email to share their couple origin story [that’s] like ’We met at La Colombe this many years ago.’” O’Connor said. “We’ve gotten sent wedding invitations. We have hosted weddings in our cafes because people have such a deep connection …. So we’re there one way or the other. In a way, it’s just a timely, relevant way to bring it to life.”