Mzansi Love Songs

What better way to tap into what Valentine’s Day represents than to bring together two evergreen ways of expressing one’s love? Chocolate and music.

While the messages on the chocolate bars would clearly serve as one way of expressing love, we wanted to create a digital campaign that would inspire audiences to write and record their own music track for their loved ones – tracks that could be shared easily using digital platforms.

The campaign was called “Mzansi love songs”. ‘Mzansi’ is an informal local language name for South Africa.

We invited the audience to write their own tweet-long love song.

We then partnered with prominent South African musicians and producers, went into the recording studio, and mixed music to the lyrics sent in by users.

An archive of ‘album covers’ was designed, and the songs were shared on the brand website and across all relevant social media channels.

Over and above those who submitted their own lyrics experiencing the excitement of having their lyrics mixed into a track, the broader audience was invited to choose an album cover, and download and share the tracks and album covers that resonated most with them for how they wanted to say Ï Love You” to their own loved ones on Valentine’s Day.