S’appuyer sur un calendrier marketing est essentiel pour planifier ses différentes animations marketing en fonction de sa stratégie. En effet, selon les secteurs d’activité, les spécificités des audiences mais aussi des objectifs que les marques se fixent, celles-ci peuvent se positionner sur différents temps forts, tout au long de l’année. Dans cet article, nous creusons donc l’importance de créer et optimiser son calendrier marketing 2025.

Quels sont les marronniers à ne pas manquer, les objectifs marketing stratégiques qu’ils peuvent vous permettre d’atteindre et les différents formats que vous pouvez diffuser pour animer votre audience ? Voici notre guide complet !

SUMMARY

• What is a marketing calendar and why create one for your brand?
• Different marketing themes to activate different strategic objectives
• 4 interactive ideas for the 2025 calendar

To be effective, rationalise their efforts and avoid missing an important date, brands need to plan their promotions around the main marketing events of the coming year.

The marketing calendar enables brands to engage their prospects and customers throughout the year. It includes all the key dates: Sales, Black Friday, Mother’s and Father’s Day, Christmas , Valentine’s DayBrands know exactly when to broadcast their campaigns. The is to capitalise on purchase intentions, for example, or simply to animate their community and stay top of mind.

Beyond the commercial evergreen contents, planning the 2025 marketing calendar should be an opportunity for brands to choose the right highlights for their vertical and their audience. The idea is not to position yourself on every holiday and event of the year. But rather to identify those that resonate with prospect and customers and that are aligned with the company’s overall objectives.

End-of-year festivities, sales of seasonal events can be ideal occasions to launch interactive campaigns focusing on discounts or exclusive offers to generate more sales! But special occasions such as sporting events and international days (for pizza, pets, etc.) can also enable brands to raise their profile or raise awareness of their commitments (via interactive quizzes, for example).

More generally, events planned throughout the marketing calendar can be aimed at stimulating and engaging the community. Commercial highlights are an opportunity to multiply the points of contact with your audience. It’s also a good time to strenthen ties and achieve love brand status

In this way, brands can move away from a purely transactional relationship with their community. The idea is to encourage exchanges through interactive activities. Competitions to showcase their creativity, sports games to capitalise on the excitement of a sporting event. By adopting different playable marketing formats , with this new technology, companies can entertain and activate their audience throughout the year. They can also adopt target different objectives and adapt to different types of event (commercial, sporting, cultural, institutional, etc.)

As we have just seen the whole point of creating a marketing calendar is to be able to identify the relevant commercial highlights for its brand. But also to vary the entertainment offered to your audience!

Engaging customers, recruiting new prospects, collecting data to personalise future campaigns or generating sales… here are 4 playable marketing formats for 4 marketing events in 2025.

1. A Gift Finder for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is the ideal opportunity for brands to capitalise on the purchasing intentions of consumers looking for a gift for their loved one. It’s also the perfect time to offer a Gift finder to its audience. This gamified animation enables participants to answer a series of questions and then access a personalised recommendation of products or services to offer their partner.

Why this Playable marketing idea works: The Gift finder not only boosts Valentine’s Day sales by intelligently redirecting prospects to products or services that are likely to interest them. But its also an excellent format for collecting data (particularly product preferences) on your audience so that you can activate them more effectively in future campaigns.

2. An anecdote competition for Mother’s Day

For Mother’s Day, brands can enliven their community by organising a competition. Plutôt que de miser sur la photo ou la vidéo, elles peuvent plus facilement engager les acheteurs en les invitant à partager l’anecdote la plus marquante avec leur mère. L’idée étant de partager facilement un contenu de manière anonyme. Les histoires les plus touchantes peuvent être repartagées sur le compte de la marque et les personnes auxquelles elles appartiennent seront récompensées avec des bons d’achat ou des codes promo.

Why this Palayable marketing idea works: competitions allow you to engage your community through creative challenges that are easy to complete. It’s also an excellent way for brands to generate UGC and therefore diversify their content strategy more easily.

3. An Outrun for the Tour de France

Sports games are particularly well suited to major sporting events and competitions. They enable brands to engage their audience by capitalising on the visibility and excitement surrounding the feature discipline. For the Tour de France, companies can share an Outrun on their digital channels or in-store via an interactive terminal.

Why this Palayable marketing idea works: The marketing animation format allows the company to perfectly match the theme of the event. It’s an opportunity to generate engagement with your target audience more easily.

4. A 100% winning One-Armed bandit for Black Friday

Every year, Black Friday is an opportunity for consumers to make savings on their Christmas shopping and treat themselves at a lower cost. For this highlight of the 2025 marketing calendar, brands can offer games like a 100% winning One-armed Bandit to distribute discounts to their audience and generate more sales.

Why this Playable marketing idea works: 100% instant wins make it easier for brands to attract the attention of their prospects, who are particularly solicited during this busy sales period. It’s also a format that’s easy to adapt to your sales-boosting objectives. You can add a deadline or conditions of use (on the online shop, in physical shops, etc.)

Conclusion

Creating your 2025 marketing calendar is the best way to effectively plan your sales events for the whole year and control your resources (time and money). Download our free comprehensive guide to fine-tune your strategy and optimise your competitions!

La Saint Valentin n’est pas seulement la fête des amoureux. C’est aussi une fête commerciale qui est devenue une date incontournable du calendrier marketing des marques. D’après les derniers chiffres disponibles issus d’une étude YouGov, près de 185 millions d’euros avaient été dépensés lors de la fête des amoureux en France, soit une progression de 275% en 10 ans. 

La Saint Valentin est d’ailleurs la 3e fête commerciale la plus importante en France, derrière Noël et Halloween. C’est donc l’occasion pour les marques de capitaliser sur les intentions d’achat des consommateurs en leur proposant des idées de cadeaux romantiques à offrir à leur moitié. 

Pour se démarquer durant cette période particulièrement concurrentielle de l’année, votre entreprise peut miser sur un levier marketing redoutable : la gamification. En intégrant des mécaniques interactives dans votre campagne marketing de Saint Valentin, vous pourrez en effet mieux capter l’attention de votre audience et les inciter à acheter leur cadeau auprès de votre marque. 

Dans cet article, nous vous partageons 3 exemples de campagnes gamifiées pour la Saint Valentin. Vous pourrez vous en inspirer pour dynamiser votre communication, engager plus efficacement votre public cible et booster vos ventes durant ce temps fort commercial. 

SUMMARY

• What goals should you aim in for your Valentine’s Day marketing campaign
• 3 Examples of gamification marketing campaigns for Valentine’s Day

Even though it remains the ultimate romantic holiday, Valentine’s Day is also an opportunity for brands to promote their offerings. This commercial holiday serves as a prime showcase for businesses that sell potential gifts for couples in love.

Of course, we think of the traditional bouquets of flowers. Industry professionals expect over a million flowers to be sold for Valentine’s Day this year, with two-thirds being red rioses. However, florists are not the only merchants celebrating Valentine’s Day. Fashion, beauty, culture, dining… Many sectors are involved in Valentine’s Day marketing.

Don’t forget about singles, who are also targeted by brands during this key commercial period. On dating apps, the annual peak of activity tends to occur at the beginning of the year. Singles often make New Year’s resolutions, and apps like Happn see an increase of over 20% in their sign-ups during the month of February.

The main objective pursued by companies in their Valentine’s Day marketing is therefore to increase sales and revenue. The goal of the campaigns implemented is to raise consumer awareness of their offerings ans encourage them to buy their Valentine’s Day gifts in-store (physical or digital).

But beyond the conversion objective, brands can also design their Valentine’s Day campaigns around other strategic goals.

Increase brand awareness

Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to gain visibility with a new audience. The aim of the campaign will be to boost brand awareness among couples (or singles) by leveraging viral marketing strategies (such as marketing contests, influencers collaborations, or co-branding).

Engage your customer community

After a quiet January following the holiday season, the marketing calendar kicks off with a bang thanks to Valentine’s Day. Businesses can take advantage of this key period to engage their audience. The idea is to increase interactions with the brand, particularly through gamification mechanics.

Contests, for example, encourage users to be creative and allow businesses to generate user-generated content (UGC).

Collect data

Customer knowledge is also a significant aspect of Valentine’s Day marketing. Brands can leverage interactions with their audience to collect relevant data, particularly regarding product preferences, as well as opt-ins for their future communication campaigns. This information can be utilized throughout the year to better segment their clientele and send personalized content and offers.

Foster loyalty and strengthen brand attachment

En mettant en jeu des récompenses attractives sur le thème de l’amour (comme des séjours en amoureux, des coffrets cadeaux, etc.), les marques peuvent ainsi booster leur rétention client. Les jeux marketing peuvent être proposés en post-achat (pour encourager le rebuy) ou réservés aux membres du programme VIP, pour augmenter la fidélisation. En récompensant ses meilleurs clients, l’entreprise pourra ainsi renforcer l’attachement à la marque et sécuriser des revenus significatifs.

To stand out from their competitors and boost the performance of their Valentine’s Day marketing strategy, an increasing number of companies are betting on gamification. Here are 3 inspiring campaigns to achieve commercial goals and engage their audience more effectively.

1. Electrolux: a Memory game to enrich their database during Valentine’s Day

On the occasion of Valentine’s Day, Electrolux launched a campaign aimed at enriching its database, specifically encouraging product registrations. Through an engaging game mechanic, Memory, the brand was able to collect opt-in very effectively while showcasing its Duos product range.

Electrolux’s campaign generated significant enthusiasm, showcasing an excellent engagement rate (31K users and an average of 2 minutes per game session) and very good results in lead qualification. This campaign allowed the brand to retarget and retain acquired leads, highlighting the ability of a gamification marketing campaign to create meaningful interactions while achieving notable results in qualification.

Del Arte: a Shooter game to generate new leads

As every year, the Del Arte brand celebrates lovers on Valentine’s Day. The interactive campaign invites participants to play a Shooter game. They are then redirected to an instant-win opportunity to win particularly attractive prizes for the target audience (gift vouchers, Interflora bouqets, trips to Paris, etc. )

The campaign primarily enabled the company to generate over 40k new sign-ups to its mailing list and opt-ins. These leads were then reactivated throughout the year through strategic marketing campaigns for the brand.

3. M&M’s: A shuffler game to boost Valentine’s Day sales

On the occasion of Valentine’s Day, My M&M’s launched a game to attract new customers by showcasing its product range. Users had to form all the pairs within a set time to access a Shuffler and immediately discover if they won their Valentine’s Day gift box. This highly engaging mechanic allowed M&M’s to generate 30k new leads.

Conclusion

Consumers are particularly attentive to brand content around Valentine’s Day. Capitalize on their purchase intentions and engagement to achieve your strategic goals by launching a gamified marketing campaign. To enhance your communication and boost your results, all you need to do is customize one of our marketing game mechanics!