Kraft Voices Twitter Love for Valentine's Day

Few brands have attacked Twitter marketing as originally as Kraft Foods, and the CPG company is at it again for Valentine’s Day. With Promoted Tweets and a Facebook app, Kraft is encouraging Twitter users to tweet the hash-tag #VoiceOfLove through tomorrow, donating 100 boxes of its Macaroni & Cheese product to Feeding America for every instance.

Twitter users are being directed to create a Valentine’s Day tweet with the hash-tag. Ted Williams, who was plucked out of homelessness to be the voice of the brand a year ago, is verbally recording some of the tweets and posting the video/audio to YouTube.

The campaign was created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky and follows other intriguing Kraft initiatives centering on Twitter from the past year. For instance, in March 2011, Kraft selected five tweets about macaroni and cheese and plugged one of them into a cable TV spot. The initiative, which was called “Mac & Cheese TV,” came on the heels of a February 2011 effort called “Mac & Jinx.” With a nod to the childhood “Jinx” game, whenever two people simultaneously tweeted “mac and cheese”, they got a link for the contest. The first one to click the link and submit a home address won five free boxes of Kraft’s macaroni and cheese product and a commemorative T-shirt.

(Read an exclusive Q&A with a Kraft brand manager about social media marketing here.)

Walgreens Asks Facebook Users to Play Cupid

Walgreens is utilizing a matchmaker-styled Facebook app that’s designed to capture Valentine’s Day retail market share. The “Play Cupid” app encourages consumers to pick two friends on the social site while suggesting they get together for the romantic holiday.

App users can put their friends’ photos into one of nine customizable images – depicting attire from formalwear to lederhosen – before posting the pictures to their Facebook pages. Each finalized image presents the user with a list of Valentine’s Day gift ideas from Walgreens, including items like roses, chocolates and cologne, according to Digitas, the agency behind the campaign.