Virginia License Plate Slogan: Virginia is for Lovers

"Virginia is for Lovers" is the slogan on Virginia's current standard passenger plate. The plate is a plain blue-on-white design with a red heart standing in for the second V in "LOVERS."

The current standard design began in March 2014. Virginia DMV media materials identify the design as the Standard Passenger Plate, and passenger plate chronology tables list March 2014 as the start of the "Virginia is for Lovers" standard base.

This was not the first time the phrase appeared on a Virginia plate. A "Virginia is for Lovers" specialty/revenue-sharing plate was authorized in 2003, more than a decade before the slogan became the default standard passenger plate text.

The tourism slogan was created after the Richmond advertising firm Martin and Woltz won the Virginia State Travel Service account in 1968. Early ideas used categories such as history lovers, beach lovers, and mountain lovers.

The agency dropped the qualifiers and kept the broader phrase "Virginia is for Lovers." That made the slogan flexible enough to cover history, beaches, mountains, romance, food, music, and ordinary travel without rewriting the campaign for each audience.

The slogan launched publicly in 1969 and became one of America's longest-running state tourism campaigns before it moved onto the standard plate.

Virginia's standard passenger slogan history is shorter than the state's tourism history. The important correction is that "Old Dominion" is Virginia's nickname, but it is not the verified long-running standard passenger plate slogan in the plate tables.