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Imagine this! Your Valentine's Day dinner is entirely paid for by someone else? Or if you're single, what if you were invited to a high-energy workout session designed specifically to meet potential dates while breaking a sweat?
This Valentine's week, brands across India decided that social media campaigns and video content weren't enough. They wanted people to step out, participate, and actually feel the love.
The shift seemed to be deliberate. Brands recognised that Valentine's Day/week had become more than a couples-only holiday. Singles, friend groups, and people at different life stages all wanted to mark the occasion in their own ways. So instead of just talking to consumers, brands invited them into physical spaces and aimed to create moments that felt personal, even when they happened in public.
For the fitness-minded singles in Bengaluru, PUMA India partnered with dating app Bumble and fitness competition format HYROX to create a new kind of Valentine's event.
On February 14 at Phoenix Marketcity, the three brands brought together singles aged 21 to 35 for a beginner-friendly HYROX workout followed by a social mixer. The idea was built on an existing partnership between PUMA and Bumble that had been running community sporting experiences since 2024.
This time, they added HYROX to the mix, betting that shared physical challenge could be a more authentic way to meet people than swiping through profiles.
The theme of moving on after breakups showed up in a different format with Tinder's campaign.
The dating app set up a street-side pop-up in Mumbai called the Move On Salon, hosted by celebrity hairstylist Sapna Bhavnani. Three creators, Akriti Negi, Urooj Ashfaq, and Prish, shared their real breakup stories while getting haircuts on camera.
The first video featured Negi, where she spoke about being two-timed in college, with the hairdresser offering the observation that moving on becomes impossible when you're still carrying emotional baggage.
The campaign aimed to turn a symbolic post-breakup ritual into a moment of renewal, filmed and shared as a way to normalise the messier parts of dating.
Nykaa took a more sentimental approach with its Love Post Office activation at Palladium Mall in Mumbai, running from February 6 to 15. The pop-up was designed to look like an old-fashioned post office, complete with a statement pink letterbox where shoppers could drop handwritten Valentine's messages.
The brand would then pair these notes with beauty gifts and help deliver them to the recipient. The brand positioned the experience as being for all kinds of relationships, partners, siblings, friends, and parents, acknowledging that Valentine's Day had expanded beyond romantic love for many people.
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Another surprise came to commuters with Ferns N Petals and Uber Black's collaboration. On February 9, select Uber Black rides across Delhi NCR included an unexpected gift: a rose bouquet in signature black packaging, handed to passengers during their journey.
The partnership turned a routine commute into a small celebratory moment, banking on the idea that gestures feel more meaningful when they're unexpected and woven into everyday life rather than announced in advance.
IGP took the opposite approach, making Valentine's expressions as public as possible. The gifting platform installed an interactive digital hoarding at Carter Road in Bandra, Mumbai, that functioned as a two-way communication device.
People could scan a QR code, send a Valentine's message via WhatsApp, and watch it appear live on the screen within moments. The installation turned the busy promenade into a living wall of emotions, where private thoughts became public declarations in real time.
Instamart's activation was even more secretive yet maximal. The quick commerce platform placed two oversized flowers on a public bench in Bandra and filmed what happened when people sat down.
Couples, families, morning walkers, and children all reacted differently to the simple setup. A couple in their 60s was seen smiling at each other.
A same-sex couple held hands. Others laughed or reached for their phones to capture the moment.
The approach was inspired by the classic Bollywood movies, where the lead actors were hidden with flowers during romantic scenes.
The resulting film went viral, hitting nearly 4 million views within 12 hours. The brand called the project ‘Phools in Love,’ which sounds like ‘fools in love.’
Crossword Bookstore went for mystery over spectacle with its ‘Blind Date with a Book’ campaign, running across all stores until February 28. Books are wrapped without covers or titles visible, accompanied only by small clue cards hinting at the genre and mood inside.
Readers are invited to pick based on vibes rather than bestseller lists or familiar authors, turning book shopping into a leap of faith similar to dating itself.
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Swiggy Dineout in Swiggy Scenes made perhaps the boldest offer of the season with its Hard Launch Tables. Across Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, select premium restaurants hosted fully sponsored dinners for couples willing to make their relationship ‘official in a public way.'
Each table would come with flowers, candles, elevated styling, a non-alcoholic champagne bottle, a bento cake, and most notably, a fully covered dining bill.
The tagline is, ‘You bring the commitment, we'll handle the rest.’
The campaign played on social media culture where relationships aren't quite real until they're publicly declared, while also removing the financial barrier that makes Valentine's Day dining prohibitively expensive for many young couples.
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Sunfeast Fantastik took the confrontational angle with its #DumpYourExCess 2.0 campaign, building on the success of its first edition.
The brand partnered with a global dating app to encourage people to block their exes across social media platforms. Those who did received a one-month free subscription to the dating app and other prizes.
The campaign centred on a WhatsApp chatbot called the DumpYourExCess Hotline, where users could publicly pledge to block their ex and receive a personalised shareable digital badge.
Taken together, these campaigns aimed to mark a shift in how brands approached Valentine's Day in 2026.
Rather than simply advertising products or running contests online, they built physical spaces and real-world moments that required people to show up and participate. Whether through working out with strangers, getting a symbolic haircut, writing a handwritten note, sitting on a bench with giant flowers, or publicly declaring a relationship over dinner, the experiences asked for more than passive consumption.
They asked for presence, and in many cases, a willingness to be a bit vulnerable in public. For brands, that level of engagement became the point, not just being seen during Valentine's season, but being remembered as part of someone's actual Valentine's story.