• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, February 1, 2019

Teleflora is switching up its game this Valentine’s Day, running a sweet animated love story that it hopes will capture the hearts of male consumers.

Since the 2017 launch of its “Love Out Loud” campaign, the floral delivery service has filmed elaborate deliveries between real people, often thousands of miles away from one another. It’s included a 60-foot-high video billboard in Times Square for its “Not-So-Secret-Admirer” stunt to  “TheVirtual Holiday Dinner Table,” reuniting a family split between Tokyo and Omaha.

But this year, Teleflora is trading fact for fiction and introducing a 90-second video called “Love Out Loud, A Silent Film.” It’s shot almost entirely in black-and-white, except for vivid splashes of flowers.

The animated approach is a first for Teleflora, owned by the Wonderful Company, based in Los Angeles, and was created by its Wonderful Agency.

The cartoon “is yet another angle on relationships and the role a hand-crafted flower arrangement can play in bringing people closer together,” Darren Moran, chief creative officer, tells Marketing Daily. “As long as there’s still a need for love in this world, we’ll keep finding new ways of fostering those connections through our products and our brand experiences.” 

The video is running on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Hulu, Tubi and Facebook.

The company says the new work is inspired by research that shows male participation and buying has been on the rise for Valentine’s Day over the last two years.

Because many men claim that they aren’t fans of Cupid, the company hopes the male protagonist's realistic yet heartfelt experiences  (win some, lose some loves) will persuade some of these secret romantics to think about flowers as a Valentine's gift.

The new campaign comes as Americans seem to be losing their V-day enthusiasm. The National Retail Federation says it expects fewer people to celebrate the holiday this year, with only 51% saying they plan to observe the holiday, down from 55% last year, and 63% in 2007.

But those who are participating are spending more, with an average of $162, up 13% from last year’s $144, and a new record. Total spending is expected to reach $20.7 billion, an increase of 6%. That includes $1.9 billion on flowers.