Teleflora’s Valentine’s Day advertisement uses animation to convey one man’s emotional journey
to find true love.
In past years, Teleflora has tapped celebrities including the late standup Don Rickles, country singer Faith Hill and supermodel Adriana Lima to help peddle Valentine’s Day flowers in commercials aired during the Super Bowl. In advance of this year’s holiday, the company took a different approach, releasing a first-ever animated short on Facebook, YouTube and streaming services Hulu and Tubi.
Titled “Love Out Loud, A Silent Film,” the ad explores one man’s quest to find true love and the essential role flowers play in that emotional journey. Animated in black and white with a vivid splash of color, the 90-second film opens with a young boy offering flowers to a childhood crush and follows his subsequent courting efforts — all of them involving a bouquet of roses. When given to a woman who reciprocates his affection, the bouquet turns a brilliant red. Teleflora captioned the film, “True love blooms brightest. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“Every year, we launch a wide variety of campaigns tied to key floral holidays that leverage different mediums and themes. For this holiday, we thought animation would be a great way to capture the simplicity, innocence and vulnerability that goes into expressing your love for someone,” said Danielle Mason, Teleflora’s senior director of consumer marketing.
“Flowers are a part of all of our love stories from the time that we’re kids. So, when we started this project, we thought about all the people we’ve given flowers to in our lives,” Mason said, explaining the film’s inspiration. “Some of those memories were good, some of them we’ve stored away, but they all had one thing in common: they paled in comparison to the first time that we gave flowers to the person who became our true love.”
The film was made by The Wonderful Company’s in-house creative team, Wonderful Agency, led by Chief Creative Officer Darren Moran. “Throughout our lives we fall for so many people, sometimes quickly, sometimes over the years,” Moran said. “Flowers and the affection they symbolize are an important part of those courtships. But in the end, we can only hope for one true love to blossom. This is a story about the journey to find that.”
Compared to other mediums, animation offers filmmakers greater flexibility to communicate through symbolism, working “as a vehicle for deeply emotional and sentimental storytelling,” Mason said.
Posted on Friday, February 1, the film has had approximately 25,000 views among its original social media sources, and has been shared more than 100 times, by florists and consumers alike.
“I found this commercial today while streaming on Hulu,” commented one woman on YouTube. “It made me cry from happiness and joy. The message came through, that hope and happiness arrives when unexpected.”
“Love Out Loud, A Silent Film” is part of Teleflora’s ongoing Love Out Loud campaign, encouraging people to share love. For its first iteration, in early December 2017, the company constructed a massive wall of bouquets on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., as a sign of unity and hope.
“We plan to continue developing creative content that resonates with consumers and encourages them to love out loud by sending their loved ones a Teleflora bouquet always made by hand and hand-delivered by a local florist,” Mason said.
Katie Hendrick Vincent is the senior contributing editor of the Society of American Florists.
