Tesco let a psychotherapist matchmake singles by their shopping baskets

Tesco wanted to become the destination supermarket for Valentine's Day without repeating the retailer ritual of couples-only offers — talking to people in relationships needing genuine romantic ideas, and to the half of the nation that is single.

A psychotherapist plays matchmaker for 32 singles using only the contents of their shopping baskets, judging how complementary their chosen products are.

BBH Live, the agency's 30-strong creative and data-driven social content unit, made a hero online film: a psychotherapist analyses the baskets of 32 singles, matches them on product complementarity, and the couples are sent on dates with varying degrees of success. Viewers were then driven to four videos of romantic ideas to recreate at home. All films were produced by Black Sheep Studios and ran on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

The campaign gave Tesco a Valentine's platform aimed at everyone rather than couples, extending the line of BBH Live's 'Spookermarket' for Tesco, which had drawn almost 30 million views and a place in YouTube's Top 10 Ads of 2015.

To help Tesco become the destination supermarket for Valentine's Day, BBH created an online campaign that saw a psychotherapist match-make shoppers based on the contents of their shopping baskets. For many, Valentine's Day felt like a retailer event awash with the same offers targeted at the same people: couples. Tesco talked to everyone this year — people in relationships who want genuinely romantic ideas, and the 51% of the nation who are single.

Created by BBH Live, the hero film tested whether your shopping basket can help you find love. Based on the insight that your basket says a lot about you, a psychotherapist analysed the baskets of 32 singles and matched them on how complementary their chosen products were. The film then followed the couples as they were sent on dates, with varying degrees of success — before driving viewers to four helpful videos of romantic ideas to recreate at home.

The 'Basket Dating' campaign ran across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, with all films produced by Black Sheep Studios, BBH's in-house video production studio. It followed the success of Tesco's 'Spookermarket', also by BBH Live and Black Sheep, which garnered almost 30 million views and was named one of YouTube's Top 10 Ads of the Year in 2015.

The prop is universal and free: everyone has a basket, so every viewer immediately wonders what theirs would say.

A psychotherapist lends the matchmaking fake authority — the joke needs an expert reading groceries like a Rorschach test.

It repositions the retailer for a holiday it usually loses: the florist owns Valentine's, but the supermarket owns the basket.

Filming real dates with 'varying degrees of success' kept it honest enough to share, not an infomercial for romance.

Your receipts are a personality test: the most ordinary purchase data becomes irresistible content when someone qualified reads it aloud.