Zola Pays Homage to the Nearly-Lost Art of the Love Letter in New Pride Campaign

Being a company all about love, Zola knows that sometimes it can be hard to express. Couples are expressing their love more via text, GChat, and email than taking the time to actually woo their partners. A recent study by the brand yielded some interesting results on the current state of love when it comes to expression and communication, insights like: on average, people say I love you 2X more per day over mobile than they do in person, and 93% of people prefer to express that mobile love via emoji. Kiss face, and yup, eggplant were #1 and #4 most popular, respectively. The same study showed that 92% of couples would be thrilled if their partner gave them a handwritten love note, but 60% said it has been longer than 6 months since they’ve written even a post-it for their partner, while 18% admitted to never have exchanging a handwritten note. And when it comes to communication, 56% of couples said they have communication issues, the majority of who blame the disconnect on their partner spending too much time on their mobile device.

Enter, 'Love Notes,' a new campaign from Zola in partnership with independent media agency, Noble People, with a mission to spread love the ‘old fashioned’ way, kicked off to celebrate Pride Month.

To tee up the campaign, Zola took to West Coast craft earlier this month with an activation to create and collect handwritten love notes from people of all walks of life who stopped by and wanted to express their love to someone. Zola then snail-mailed them directly to the unsuspecting recipients. Thousands of people stopped by the activation and letters were shipped across the world – US, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Egypt, India, Japan, Thailand and Singapore were among some of the destinations.

This week, selects of those actual handwritten letters from real people of all walks of life at West Coast Craft have been repurposed into billboards, kiosks and bus shelters and placed strategically throughout the city of San Francisco in high traffic areas in and around the parade route. Then, to bring the campaign to the national stage, Zola and Noble People are taking heartfelt love notes from real couples in San Francisco and turning them into compelling social content to be posted across Instagram and Facebook throughout the month of July. Additionally, influencers will be used to garner national reach by sharing their own handwritten love notes and encouraging their followers to spread love. Zola and Noble People collaborated with The Working Assembly for design of the campaign elements and Rebel & Rogue to bring the activation to life.