IMC PROJECT

Brand in Focus: Bumble

Submitted By:
Rajeshwer Vardhan Anand (2021PGP165)
Ruchika Sharma (2021PGP172)
Sayan Das (2021PGP175)
Aayushi Pandey (2021PGP191)
Abhinandan Chakrabarti (2021PGP192)
Aniket Ashok Gawande (2021PGP197)

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 Brand in Focus: Bumble India
Bumble is an online dating application that enables people to connect with each other by
looking at each other’s Bumble profiles. In recent years, online dating has become the talk of
the town. At present, there are several other dating applications in the market that provide
more or less similar features, however, what makes Bumble stand out is the vision with which
it was formed.
After leaving Tinder, another online dating application, Whitney Wolfe Herd, the Founder of
Bumble started the platform as a “Feminist Dating Application”. The dream, ‘social network
by women for everyone’ is to make the women feel empowered to “make the first move”.
People can use the application to find dating partners, friends, and even people to grow their
corporate network.

Why Bumble?
We chose Bumble because of its extensive marketing communication program. Bumble’s
marketing success can be underlined by the fact that it had zero users in December 2014, at
the time of its launch, and as of February 2021, it gained an illustrious user base of 40 million
users.
Being an internet-based ‘social’ application, Bumble exploits the ‘social’ space for its various
marketing communications and campaigns very efficiently, but it does not restrict itself there.
It leverages the full potential of the internet by having several social media accounts,
YouTube campaigns, online commercials, and podcasts. Besides these, Bumble also has taken
advantage of physical modes of communications such as Event Marketing, Ambassador
Programs, etc.
Bumble has successfully launched several marketing campaigns. However, we feel that there
is still scope for expansion. As of now, Bumble’s main user base is concentrated in tier-1, tier-
2, and metro cities of India, while it can be expanded to tier-3 cities as well.

The IMC Programs

A few highlights of Bumble’s IMC program are as follows:
1) Social Media Campaigns
Bumble constantly posts consumable and customer-engaging content on its various
social media accounts. It strategically maintains a ‘yellow’ color theme across all of its
posts as yellow is its brand color.

Bumble has integrated the power of strong vision and hashtags. A few of Bumble’s
successful hashtag campaigns are #HowWeEqual and #DatingJustGotEqual. The
campaigns received the support of many celebrities and influencers.

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 During the Covid-19 pandemic, the brand came up with another campaign ‘Love will
find a way’ to instill the importance of love, hope, and resilience.

2) YouTube Marketing
The brand used YoutTube marketing to post content on dating tips, campaign
commercials, etc.

In December 2020, it also started a talk series ‘Dating these days’ that hosted many
Bollywood celebrities like Nina Gupta, Sanya Malhotra, Kirti khuhari, etc. This
campaign, based on a relatively new concept, helped the brand to initiate a
conversation around and catch the attention of its potential users.

3) Event Marketing
Bumble’s primary target group is youngsters. There is always great enthusiasm for a
music show in this segment. Keeping this in mind, Bumble became the sponsor of a
contemporary music festival Magnetic Fields to catch the attention of thousands of
its potential users.

4) Influencer & Micro-Influence Marketing

To increase brand awareness, Bumble also uses Influencer Marketing where it shares
the content created by these influencers sharing their own experiences. A few of its
influencers are Komal Pandey, Kusha Kapila, and, Srishti Dixit.

It also collaborates with micro-influencers (influencers with smaller follower bases

ranging between 1000-100000 followers) to curate content for their niche audience.

5) Brand Ambassador
A brand ambassador helps to create a strong brand image in the market. Bumble
chose an international icon and a Bollywood celebrity Priyanka Chopra Jonas as its
face.

6) In-App Experiences
The application tries to create the best user experience for its users, especially
women. There are certain features that ensure a great in-app experience:
a) Unlike other dating apps, it provides multiple options to choose from.
Bumble Date enables the user to find a romantic partner, while Bumble
BFF helps to find friends and Bumble Bizz comes in handy to expand
corporate networks.
b) Women make the first move
c) To ensure women’s safety, it has a zero-tolerance policy for sexism and
bad behavior.
d) Another safety feature of keeping a secure image.

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 7) Social Welfare
During the Covid-19 pandemic, while Bumble was earning profits, many small firms
were making losses. In this tough phase, it initiated the ‘Bumble Community Grant
Program’ to help 13 small firms that were incurring losses.

All of these IMC programs helped Bumble to gain the traction of millions of users while
creating a positive brand image. Its IMC program also helped it to beat its contemporaries.
These programs try to exploit all the possible customer touch points; from the time the
customer becomes aware of the brand to the installation of the application, in-app
experiences, and the brand communications to and with the customers.

How are they doing it?

The brand is using its vision to create its IMC programs. It can be observed that Bumble’s IMC
programs follow the methodology

vision -> mission -> goals -> value proposition -> USP
The brand’s vision is ‘We're envisioning a world free of misogyny, where all relationships are
equal. Create the world you've always imagined, one first move at a time.’ This reflects
clearly in its value proposition as well as the USP that revolves around creating a safe dating
space for women.
The brand has created a differentiation from its competitors around its USP. While the other
competitors provide a space for finding romantic partners, bumble augmented the features
of finding BFFs and professional opportunities to its expected feature of finding a romantic
partner.

Why are they doing it?

All of Bumble’s IMC programs are curated keeping its target customers in mind, i.e., the
youngsters. Be it the consumable social media content or its sponsorship, everything is
chosen based on the interest of the youngsters that are its potential users.