For Valentine’s Day 2025, Diablo IV set out to cut through a sea of predictable brand romance by doing what our franchise does best: embracing the grotesque. “Eat Your Heart Out” was designed to reignite awareness and conversation around the Diablo IV expansion by resurrecting one of its most shocking narrative moments, Neyrelle consuming Ah Bulan’s heart, and translating it into a real-world, culturally disruptive experience.
Our primary objective was broad awareness and incremental reach beyond our owned audience, using creator-led content to spark organic conversation across platforms. Rather than relying on traditional campaign beats, we aimed to create a moment that felt dangerous, unexpected, and unmistakably Diablo. It was one that creators had to react to, not rehearse.
A secondary goal was momentum: keeping Diablo IV culturally present during a non-launch window by tapping into a timely cultural moment (Valentine’s Day) and subverting it in a way only the brand could. By merging high-concept lore with tactile shock value, we sought to create content that audiences would stop scrolling for, share instinctively, and remember long after the chocolates were gone.
To bring “Eat Your Heart Out” to life, Diablo IV partnered with Sarah Hardy of Edible Museum to craft grotesquely realistic, anatomically detailed chocolate hearts. It was equal parts art piece, horror prop, and confection. These hearts became the physical manifestation of a pivotal in-game moment, bridging Diablo’s dark fantasy world with real-world creator culture.
In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, we overnighted boxes of chocolate hearts to creators across North America and EMEA. Each package included a poetic note and almost no direction. This was intentional. Rather than scripting reactions, we trusted our creators, and the object itself, to do the work. The lack of guardrails invited genuine shock, curiosity, delight, and disgust, resulting in authentic, unscripted unboxings that felt native to each platform.
The execution leaned into speed and surprise. With a highly constricted timeline, the campaign operated as a sprint: fast production, rapid logistics, and minimal revision cycles. This constraint forced decisiveness and sharpened the idea. There was no room for overthinking or dilution. The hearts simply arrived, unannounced, demanding a response.
What made the campaign unique wasn’t just the shock factor, but the restraint. We resisted over-branding, heavy messaging, or overt calls to action. Diablo’s reputation for strange, unsettling, and bold marketing carried the story. Creators filled in the gaps with their own humor, horror, and commentary, organically amplifying the moment across TikTok, X, Instagram, YouTube, and beyond.
The result was a campaign that felt discovered rather than deployed. It was an eerie Valentine’s Day interruption that blurred the line between fandom, art, and appetite, and reminded audiences that Diablo doesn’t just participate in culture. It warps it.
“Eat Your Heart Out” successfully achieved its objective of driving awareness and sustained conversation during a non-launch period. The campaign generated 233.7K total views and impressions, with 7K engagements, signaling strong audience interaction driven by genuine creator reactions rather than scripted promotion.
Owned channels contributed 186.7K in reach, while creator content delivered a substantial 4.5M total creator reach, demonstrating the power of tactile, creator-first storytelling to scale organically. In total, 40 creators posted content across regions, amplifying the campaign globally.
Beyond traditional metrics, the campaign’s impact was felt culturally. 63 chocolate hearts were consumed, a statistic that became a punchline in itself, along with 20 hearts distributed to press and leadership and 43 to creators across NA and EMEA, extending the campaign’s influence beyond social feeds.
By leaning into Diablo’s unapologetically dark identity and trusting creators to react authentically, the campaign delivered memorability, shareability, and cultural relevance. Thus proving that sometimes the fastest way to hearts and minds is straight through the chest.
