American Greetings Launches Twitter Contest for Valentine's Day

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American Greetings kicked off a 12-day Twitter contest yesterday while attempting to build buzz heading into Valentine's Day. The contest, dubbed "Follow the Love," will include daily questions to be answered in tweets (140 characters or less) by the brand's followers.

Each day, the winning tweet will be selected by the company's in-house judges and then awarded one $100 retailer gift card and a $250 cash gift card. According to the brand's Twitter page, winners will be announced at 8:30 a.m. EDT the following day. After the stint ends on Feb. 12, the Cleveland, OH-based firm will conduct a grand-prize drawing for $1,000.

To enter, viewers are required to follow "AMgreetings" on Twitter and then tag their response to the daily question as "#LoveAG." The question posed yesterday: "What does it feel like to fall in love?" During the first day, American Greetings modestly increased its number of followers by around 100 - from 1,200 in the morning to more than 1,300 in late afternoon.

"We've been engaging people on Twitter for some time now, but this is sort of a pilot program for us to gauge consumer response," explained a company spokesperson.

Meanwhile, the company has also set up interactive tools at its Web site to engage viewers for the romantic gift-giving day. The card manufacturer's home page greets visitors with four heart-shaped images, which count down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until Valentine's Day. Below them appears a store locator box where consumers can type in their zip codes to find a retailer. A handful of examples load on the home page without taking the visitor to a new page, enabling them to jot down a store address while utilizing other site tools.

Such tools include an "Ideas" section where viewers can participate in a Valentine's Day poll, take a quiz, and read about love note writing. Lastly, it allows the opportunity to send animated e-cards for a subscription fee.

The Valentine's Day push comes on the heels of other recent interactive efforts by the brand - most notably launching an iPhone app last August.