The History of Valentine's Day

Love & marketing…

The roots of Valentine’s Day stretch all the way back to Ancient Rome and a courtship and matchmaking festival which took place each year on the 15th of February. However, legend has it that when St. Valentine was executed on the 14th of February, 278 A.D. he wrote a letter to his lover and signed it “From Your Valentine”, and sometime after the festival was moved from the 15th of February to the 14th to honour St. Valentine. 

But that was not the Valentine’s Day we have become so familiar with today. 

Historians believe that Valentine’s Day began to be romanticised by classic authors like William Shakespeare in the the 1600s, in works like Hamlet and Sonnet 18. 

But, of course, it wasn’t until our friends the Americans began to run with the idea of Valentine’s Day in the 1800s that we saw it turn into its modern incarnation. 

1822: On English shores, in 1822, British chocolate company Cadburys sells the first ever heart shaped box for Valentine’s day.

1847: It’s believed that one American woman, Esther Howland, was so intrigued by a Valentine’s greeting from an English lover, that she fell in love with the idea of bringing the idea to the U.S. She was an early entrepreneur, and perhaps the first person to envisage a mainstream market for Valentine’s day cards. 

1849: Howland produces a sample of a dozen Valentine’s Day cards, hoping to make $200. Instead, she makes 25X that, proving for the first time the widespread demand for Valentine’s day products. 

1866: New England Confectionary Company (NECCO) are the first sweet producer to dye words onto confectionary for Valentine’s Day. 

1948: By this point, Valentine’s Day cards have become a huge market in the US, with multiple card producers competing with each-other for the demand. To set themselves apart, De Beers diamond company runs a “Diamonds are forever” campaign that encourages people to buy jewelery as a Valentine’s Day gift.

1985: Card producer Hallmark begins to set itself apart from competitors, spending huge money on Valentine’s Day commercials throughout the 80s. 

1986: Hershey’s Chocolate begin packaging their Hersey’s kisses in pink and red foil, making them a Valentine’s day staple. 

2005: Valentine’s day goes digital: On February 14th, Youtube, which originated as an online dating site, debuts on the internet. Co-founder Steve Chen still credits its invention as the brainchild of “three guys on Valentine’s Day that had nothing to do”. 

2013: Ride-sharing company Uber rolls out its “romance on demand” campaign, allowing users to send flowers on Valentine’s Day via their app. 

2017: NetBase, a social media analytics platform, releases a Valentine’s Day Sentiment Analysis report, detailing how people engage with the holiday online. In total, it measured nine million mentions of the #HappyValentinesDay alone. 

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