Creative Concept & Campaign Strategy
Spec project: a 360° Valentine's Day campaign for Candlelight / Fever
My role: Strategic Creative & Copywriter — cultural analysis, creative concept, rationale, and all creative across channels.
CANDLELIGHT.
Redefining the classic date for the experience economy.
How to sell Candlelight to Valentine's Day?
The Insight: Valentine's Day isn't short on options. It's short on meaning. The dinner, the movie, the flowers — they're not bad ideas. They're just expected ones. Meanwhile, research points to a clear consumer shift: people are prioritizing emotional experiences over material gifts.
The Opportunity: Fever's Candlelight concerts offer something rare: meaning and genuine intimacy. The strategy was to position Candlelight not just as a music event, but as a romantic upgrade.
REDEFINE THE
CLASSIC DATE
The word "classic" does two things at once: it calls out the predictable date (dinner, movie) and elevates what Candlelight actually offers — classical music, timeless and intimate. The tension between those two meanings is the campaign.
Three phases, one through-line.
Plant the question before revealing the answer.
Show the contrast. Chaos of the usual versus the stillness of Candlelight.
Urgency without pressure. An invitation, not a push.
Swiping Left on Clichés
A social teaser that mimics the user interface of a calendar app. The user literally "swipes" away the boring dinner reservation to reveal the glowing Candlelight icon.
Redefine the classic date.
A fast-paced montage exposing the failures of the "old standards": a chaotic dinner, a loud action movie, and a stargazing trip ruined by bad weather. The tension builds until a golden light transforms the mundane living room into a stunning, candlelit venue.
Candlelight: Redefine the classic date."
Contrast: Noisy audio (clinking cutlery, explosions, crickets) builds to an uncomfortable peak, then resolves instantly into a rich, symphonic orchestral performance.
"Turn the wait into a date."
A bus shelter turned live experience. Motion sensors activated music when two people stood together in front of the panel — the concept made physical.
Sonic Storytelling
POV-style video — what a date usually sounds like versus what it should sound like. The contrast did the work in under six seconds, relying on sensory relief to drive awareness.
Lowering Friction
Remarketing audiences got urgency-led copy. Lower friction CTAs — "upgrade your date" instead of "buy now" — reduced the perceived commitment and increased conversion rates.
Distinct jobs,
distinct tones.
Two emails mirroring the campaign phases: consideration first, conversion last. Each with a distinct job, a distinct tone.
Strategy and copy aren't two steps in a process.
That separation often makes sense in larger teams — a strategist sets the direction, a writer executes it. But the best creative work tends to happen when those two modes of thinking are in the same room at the same time, pushing against each other.
Here, the cultural insight — people craving meaning over routine — shaped the concept directly. And the concept shaped every line, every channel, every CTA. "Redefine the classic date" isn't a tagline layered on top of a strategy. It is the strategy, just in fewer words.