Verizon’s overarching 2022 value proposition: Give people the ultra-best in everything. So, our Valentine’s Day brief was to leverage this proposition with a social activation that helped people get the very best Valentine’s gifts. Something that went beyond the typical remit of selling devices. Our one-of-a-kind pieces of digital art were minted and stored on the blockchain and then made available to people through their virtual wallets. Through this innovative idea, we created not only brand loyalty, but also actual financial value for customers by turning something worthless into something worthwhile.

Last year, Americans spent $20B on Valentine’s gifts. Some were good, some not so much: toasters, toothbrushes, socks. The list goes on.

This year, we asked people on Twitter to playfully share their worst V-Day gifts. Then we made those worthless gifts worth something by turning them into the ultimate gift for 2022: collectible NFTs.

We partnered with one of the hottest NFT collectives, Chibi Labs, and in just two days minted a collection of 20 NFTs based on the community's responses.

On February 14, we delivered NFTs to people’s crypto wallets, turning forgettable gifts into works of art.

Research showed that gift-giving for Valentine’s Day followed the “same-old, same-old” pattern of flowers, perfume, chocolate, and other expected items. Though these Valentine's Day gifts have stood the test of time, they’ve become snooze-worthy in the years since the holiday was popularized. This inspired our strategy to disrupt these old expressions by turning IRL gift lemons into virtual lemonade.

Given that we wanted to activate on a social platform to engage new and existing customers in conversations surrounding the holiday, Twitter was a natural fit.

Non-fashion brands working in the NFT space often aim to make the sought-after pieces more accessible to those seeking a way into the community. With only 7% of the general population having bought or sold NFTs in the last six months (S&P Global), we saw an opportunity to invite others into this crowd with ultra-relatable content and to make worthless gifts worth something special.

As an innovation brand, we wanted to continue to have an impactful presence in the ecosystem of technology and innovation—in this particular case, the metaverse and blockchain/Web3. To reach digital enthusiasts, we partnered with NFT influencers and used Twitter to engage with fans, and the NFT community in particular, by asking them to playfully share their worst V-Day gifts.

Then we made those worthless gifts worth something by turning them into the ultra-best gift for 2022: collectible NFTs. On February 14, we delivered the NFTs to people’s crypto wallets, turning forgettable gifts like musky cologne and toothbrushes into curated works of art.

In just two days, we designed and minted a custom collection of 20 NFTs based on the community's responses. The NFTs were delivered to crypto wallets and also hosted on a Verizon-branded OpenSea gallery.

In the end, we built on our proposition of delivering the ultra-best by giving targeted consumers the hottest gift on the market: resellable NFTs.

Overall, our Token of Love activation garnered 3.8M impressions, an overall interaction rate of 5.63% on Twitter (+280% above the platform benchmark of 1.48%), and we drove a 0.33% Comment Rate on Twitter, ranking #1 out of all content categories and 10x above the platform average. All with $0 in paid media. Also, the current auction price for an NFT toothbrush is over $100K.

We flipped the world’s worst Valentine’s gifts into ones worthy of the metaverse.