Updated October 2026
Giant props, installations and projections...
Valentine’s Marketing and Event Ideas
One way to use Oddtoe...
The Valentine’s Package
For shopping center, hotel, venue and brand marketing teams
Use Case: Valentine’s Window Displays & Activations
Oddtoe is an experiential design and generative-AI animation studio based in Melbourne, creating projection, installation, and animated work for events, venues, and galleries. This is a use case: how a shopping center, a hotel or a brand uses Oddtoe for a Valentine’s window display, court piece or installation, from the first drawing to the photograph people post. The worked example is one giant inflatable slot machine for a shopping center court, lit from the inside. The same steps apply to a luxury handbag sculpture, an offline meeting booth, a keepsake heart give-away, a mascot or a projection on a building.
In the weeks before Valentine’s, imagine one enormous slot machine in the center court, lit from the inside, with a queue of couples and friends waiting to take their photo with it. Oddtoe designs that, and you see it drawn on your own site before anything is made. The closest built work is a kids’ show piece: Oddtoe carved a 2.1-meter baobab for Babbling with Baobabs, a kids’ show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and ran live projection over it at Signal, the City of Melbourne’s arts space. A Valentine’s court is the same kind of project: a venue with its own rules, and people who came for something else.
The Best Valentine’s Day campaigns are with Oddtoe...
6 IDEAS FOR YOUR NEXT VALENTINE'S
Six projects a marketing team has before Valentine's. Pick the one your brand could pull off and Oddtoe is the partner for it: one artist draws it, a specialist maker builds it, and one person runs the project. Roll over a circle to see each one.
Want one of these for your court, window or street? Send the date and the site. Most of them start with a drawing of the place.
Let's look at three steps in the process...
Three Drawings from the Sketchbook
Oddtoe handles the first three stages of a Valentine’s piece: what the object is, how it is drawn into your court or window, and how it is fixed, lit and approved by the people who run the site.
Ideation
What is the one thing in the center that makes someone stop and take a photo? A slot machine for romance. A luxury handbag that spills a ribbon of hearts. A meeting booth for people who are tired of swiping. The idea, and what it has to do with your brand, gets worked out here, before anyone orders more red balloons.
Drawn into the Building
The piece is drawn in the space at the size it will be, with the escalators, the queue line and people for scale. That drawing is what your center manager approves. It shows where the piece stands, how big it is and what holds it in place.
Air, Power & Anchoring
What the piece plugs into, how it is fixed to a tiled floor or a forecourt, where the crowd goes, and who has to say yes. Rules differ by site, center and council, so Oddtoe works through them with your team before anything is built.
What the marketing team counts afterwards...
What It Does to Your Numbers
One enormous slot machine, lit from the first morning, and a queue of people who came for Valentine’s. Out come the phones.
Afterwards the marketing team has a report to write, and the numbers are easy to get: visitors, photos, and who stayed to shop or dine.
I like the tracking in place before the machine goes up. Oddtoe shares a founder with the Datalabs Agency, a data visualization studio, so a dashboard that shows whether it worked can be part of the project.
Centers, hotels, venues, and brands
Who Commissions Work Like This?
Shopping centers, hotels, attractions, venues and brands with a Valentine’s to get through. The person who rings is usually in marketing, events or brand, and the project already has a date, a site and a budget line.
Shopping center marketing teams want the court piece, and the photograph people share.
Hotel and venue managers want the lobby or forecourt piece, up well before the day.
Attraction and event teams want the walk-in piece and a queue that keeps moving.
Brand and campaign teams want a Valentine’s character that lives across the window, the screen and the social feed.
Councils and precinct groups want one object that brings people to the street, and a reason to stay. Agencies producing a Valentine’s campaign for a client are welcome too: see experiential marketing.
Drag the handle, or the drawing, to build it...
FROM FLAT DRAWING TO LIT MACHINE
The bit that is not a service
Why Oddtoe Likes Valentine’s
Valentine’s is the brief where a brand gets to be sweet and a bit daft. I trained as a cartoonist, so the first thing I do is draw the slot machine and the handbag that will sit in the court, on the screen and on the box.
I also make my own installation work, and an audience that stops and stares is an audience I like very much.
In the run-up to Valentine’s a lot of feeds fill with the same red hearts. A piece people can stand next to, film and post gives your center something the others do not have, and it is designed to read on a phone screen as well as in the court.
You see that picture before anything is made, drawn on your own site at the size it will be. Valentine’s Day 2027 is Sunday 14 February, and an activation can run for the weeks leading up to it.
Anchored, powered, and lit from the first night...
Designed to be Installed »
Down when it ends, out again next year...
« Built to Come Down Again
The piece, the drawings, and the footage afterwards
What Does a Valentine’s Piece Actually Get?
The piece, the drawings it was approved from, the animation if it is projected, and the photos and video from the run. All of it is yours to keep, crate included.
• The piece — in this example one giant inflatable slot machine for a court
• The drawings — panel patterns your center can file
• The animation — if projected, yours to run again
• Photos and video from the run
People forget about the drawings. The next time the piece goes up, the center will ask for them, and you will have them.
The piece can be whatever the brief needs: a giant inflatable, a built prop for the window, a costume, a walk-in installation, a facade animated for the week. The screen version and the physical version are drawn together, so they match.
Everything in the box
What the Package Covers
Ideation
We work out what the court needs to look like before we work out what to build. Bring the date, the site, and a plan of the court or the window.
Visualization
The piece drawn on your site at the size it will be, with people for scale. Your center manager signs off on a picture of the thing in the court.
Feasibility
Size, fixing, power for the lights, crowd flow and who has to say yes. Set up in daylight, against a date that does not move.
Fabrication
Designed in Melbourne and built by the right maker for the piece, here or near you. Finished to photograph well all day, and made to come down when the run ends and go back up next year.
Project Management
I run the project myself: visual progress reports, a plan against your date, and a run sheet for set-up day worked out with your center and security teams.
Six
ideas to steal
One
prop, one photograph
Months
ahead of the season
Full
drawings and artwork
Daylight
to close, every day of the run
Years
of reuse
A precedent, in a City of Melbourne venue
Why One Artist Designs All of It
A Valentine’s piece has to work three ways. It has to read from across the court, stand up around crowds, and go up again next year. See installation art, prop design and inflatable art.
Oddtoe carved a 2.1-meter baobab for Babbling with Baobabs, a kids’ show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and ran live projection over it at Signal, the City of Melbourne’s arts space.
That project had what a Valentine’s court has: a venue with its own rules, lighting checked in daylight, and an audience who had come for something else.
For an inflatable, a costume or a prop, the design is done here and a specialist maker builds from the drawings. You see the finished piece on paper before you commit.
Where the Valentine's budget actually goes
Stock Decorations, a Hire Package, or Something Drawn?
A Valentine’s budget usually has one line for the thing that makes the site different. Here is what that line buys three different ways.
| Stock decorations | A hire package | A commissioned piece | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Bought again each year | A hire fee each season | One build, spread over several Valentine’s |
| What people photograph | A design people have seen at other centers | The display, if it is not the same as next door | The piece, with your brand on it |
| Whose idea it is | A catalogue’s | The hire company’s | Drawn for your site and your brand |
| Approvals | Rarely an issue | Handled by the hire company | Drawn and agreed with your venue before the build |
| What you own afterwards | The inflatable | Nothing | The piece, the drawings and the footage |
Questions about
Valentine’s activations?
Interested in seeing more…
built work?
A 2.1-metre carved baobab, lit and projection-mapped, built for Oddtoe's children's show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
A church renovation with a sense of humor.
Sculpture design case study of Oddtoe's limited edition, "Roman General with Pinkeye".
Tell me the date and the site.
Got a Valentine’s coming up?
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