Tinder: You're not for everyone

Source: Jay Chiat Strategic Excellence Awards, Bronze, Brand Pivot Strategy, 2022
Downloaded from WARC

Tinder, a dating app, increased its downloads by 8% with the ‘You’re not for everyone’ campaign which highlighted users' quirks and interests to make matches, as
opposed to basic profiles.

While Tinder was very successful in its early years, it now has many competitors and has lost the market of millennial women it held before.
To recapture this demographic, they knew they had to move past the basic profile and focus on shared interests and disinterests between potential matches.
Tinder launched the explore feature which matched people with similar interests, which was then matched with the ‘You’re not for everyone’ ad campaign on other
platforms highlighting how one's quirks and interests, like a reality TV obsession, can impact dating.
Downloads increased on 25–34 year-old women by 8% and the ads increased brand favourability by 0.91 pts.

Introduction
There is no greater challenge than getting those that have previously tried your product and then decided it's not for them - to try you again.

This is the story of how Tinder was able to get millennial women who thought they'd outgrown the app, to re-evaluate and reactivate their Tinder accounts.

We had the perfect new feature to do this: Tinder Explore.

An in-app feature that allows you to sort your matches by interests.

But to re-engage, we knew we had to truly pivot our strategy..

Instead of following the category and focusing on a Disney version of finding the one, we focused on the refreshingly honest insight that your individual quirks (whether that may be
your intense love of astrology, or love of terrible TV shows) are definitely not for everyone - but they will be for someone.

Pivoting Tinder perceptions from a hook-up app, to a place where the quirks that make you different are not only celebrated but when coupled with the Explore Feature are a
valuable tool to finding the perfect match.

And the pivot worked. We engaged emotionally with our audience, increased downloads by 8%, all while continuing to grow profitability for Tinder.

Background
Tinder, the birthplace of the swipe.

Since 2012, Tinder has not just been a dating app, it has been THE dating app.

With over 75 million active monthly users, and with 1.5 billion swipes and 30 million matches every day, it was as big a part of peoples' dating lives as it was a part of the culture.

It was so ingrained in society, that every new app that launched was 'the Tinder of...' its industry', Tinder was a featured lyric in over 2,000 songs2 and it had led the way in growing
the acceptability of online dating - seeing people of all ages flood the platform.

By 2021 Tinder the category had shifted under its feet.

Tinder hadn't changed. But the category had.

Bumble, Grindr, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, Feeld, Buddy, OneNight, OKCupid and many similar dating apps have flooded the market in the last 10 years - each giving their own unique
take on the world of dating.

In fact, there were so many new apps, that I doubt dear reader noticed two of the apps previously listed don't even exist (yet).

And it wasn't limited to dating apps - "Sliding into DMs" on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram were growing and slowly eating Tinder's lunch3.

Tinder was still the juggernaut of the category but, like Facebook, it was no longer the shiny new thing in the category.

Tinder was trying to engage a new audience.

After a decade of targeting 18 to 24 year olds, Tinder identified that they needed to re-engage with the 25 to 34 year-old female market.

This was an audience that had likely tried Tinder in their younger years, found varying levels of success and were now feeling tentative about giving Tinder another try.

This was an important audience for Tinder to consolidate, as they were more likely to pay for premium features than the younger cohort.4

While other apps allowed more information and segmentation, Tinder had stuck to its winning formula of presenting a wide range of people with only a few photos and some basic
information.
This wasn't what this audience wanted, they knew what they liked and what they didn't and wanted to match with people that shared those interests.

Fortunately, we had a new feature that resolved this.

After almost a decade, Tinder was launching its first new feature on its app:

The Explore feature.

A new section of the app that, instead of matching you with a random person, would match you with people who had similar interests or first date preferences.

Into anime? Free tonight? Looking for a fellow Pisces? Want to go for a coffee instead of a beer?

Clicking the corresponding tile in the Explore feature would match you into a sub-group full of swipeable profiles of those that shared your interests.

But the product wasn't going to be our panacea.

Our target believed they already knew everything about Tinder.

To stimulate trial of Explore, we needed to show them we had meaningfully improved the Tinder experience in a way that was truly relevant to them.

Objectives
We had three primary metrics to indicate campaign success.

CHANGE PERCEPTIONS

We needed to make Tinder relevant again for this audience. Success would be measured by:

Ad recall rates exceeding the category norms

Favorability exceeding category norms
Improve our consideration rates from 3rd in the category to 2nd

INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR

We hoped to achieve an incremental download increase of 5% over the course of the campaign.

DRIVE PROFITABILITY

Continue or exceed Tinder's quarter-on-quarter revenue growth of $+13M.

The strategy
It was going to be an uphill battle.

There is no greater challenge in marketing than to get those that have previously tried your product and then decided it's not for them - to try you again.

Unlike Tinder's traditional creative target, Gen-Z, who were new to online dating - millennials felt largely burnt out by the online dating world5.

They'd had good times, and... not so good times.

A lot of dates that had gone nowhere, and many of them on Tinder.

Yet, we found they were increasingly proud of what they'd learnt on the way.6

Research showed that dating was being reframed as a journey of self-discovery as much as it was an opportunity to find love.78

And it had a name, the Self-Love Revolution.9

They were using dating to identify their personal boundaries, red flags and figuring out who they were and what they wanted out of life and love.

A movement pushing against the societal pressure for external validation, and focusing more on internal acceptance of what makes them unique.

"If you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else, can I get an amen?!" – Millennial icon Ru Paul10

And they didn't care if you liked it or not.

The rise of TikTok subcultures (Witchtok, Booktok, Cottagecore, to name a few) was a testament to this.

They had given this generation a way to lean into what makes them different, to find new tribes that accepted them for it and define their entire personalities by it.

In fact, 73% of millennials believe they need more self-expression to live a happy healthy life.11

TINDER'S INSIGHT: Coming to terms with and celebrating what makes me unique is a deeply liberating experience - especially if it means I'm not to everyone's taste.

WHICH INFORMED OUR PIVOT: Turning Tinder from an overwhelming Gen-Z hook-up app, to a place where millennials' differences were not only celebrated, but a means to find
the perfect match.

THE CREATIVE PLATFORM: You're Not For Everyone

In a category fueled by mushy love messages and unrealistic expectations, we chose to lean into the opposite.
Some people won't like you.

And you won't like some people.

But the magic in there is that Tinder's new feature prompts the kind of real human connection that leads you exactly to your type. No matter how niche.

We told a number of stories that reflected elements of millennial women's liberating point of view that they may not be for everyone.

An astral-rebirthing
Millennials' fervor for astrology is unparalleled, and we knew that it was often a red flag if it wasn't an astrological match.

A love of terrible reality shows

We found an increasing desire for our audience to show love for their guilty TV pleasures. With shows like Love Island and The Bachelor featuring more frequently on
Tinder profiles.

We partnered these slice-of-life vignettes with a product demonstration of Tinder's brand Explore feature.

The tone was distinctively Tinder. Refreshingly honest, funny, but also significantly more adult, to resonate with our self-aware audience.

The media strategy

We launched at places that millennials were looking for matches.

Sure, it's absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to advertise on our competitors' platforms, but we knew that our target wasn't only using those platforms to date.

Our comms solution - over index our spend on online-streaming platforms, YouTube and TikTok as a means to target them in moments that matter.

We were contextual, with a specific focus on the scenarios.

Scanning through your daily horoscope? We were there with the astral birth spot.

Watching Love Island on Hulu? We were there with our binge watching spot.

Results
But did it work?

Mota Mota sure thought so:

But we can't just rely on Mota Mota, we need some data to prove effectiveness.

CHANGE PERCEPTIONS

Did we outperformed category ad recall, favorability and consideration rates?

Yes to all three counts.

Ad recall
Increased by +9.66pts, surpassing historical benchmarks of +6.2pts12 13
Brand favorability
Increased by +.91pts, surpassing benchmarks of +.85pts14
Consideration
In the months before the campaign, Tinder was sitting third behind Bumble and Hinge. In the months after the campaign, Tinder rose to the top - extending to its largest
lead of its competitors since tracking began15

INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR

Had our perception changes led to downloads?

We hoped to increase downloads of Tinder by 5% over the course of the campaign.

Incredibly, we saw an 8% uplift over the campaign period for 25–34 year-old women16

A significant increase for a market that were jaded by their previous Tinder experience.

DRIVE PROFITABILITY

It's difficult to say as 'reason for download' isn't captured at the point of download.

What we do know is that in the month that had the majority of the ad-spend, Tinder's revenue increased $17M quarter-on-quarter.17

A significant acceleration from the previous quarter-on-quarter growth.

Conclusion
Tinder needed to find a way to drive reconsideration of the app as a space for millennial women wanting more than just a hook up.

In order to overcome this, we needed to pivot - switching Tinder from an app that shows you all the people that are out there, to one that understands that you're not for everyone.
And just like our audience, Tinder thought that was something to be proud of.

The idea, coupled with the new Explore feature, allowed Tinder to not only drive consideration and brand favourability, but also see a spike from an audience that we worried had left
the platform forever.

Footnotes
1. The Tinder of X repository of websites
2. Lyrics.com 'Tinder', 2022
3. Mashable, TikTok is proof that people can make any social media network into a dating app, 2022
4. https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/why-tinders-charging-older-users-more-and-why-it-makes-perfect-sense
5. NPR, Dating Burnout; When Swiping Becomes a Chore, 2020
6. The Millennial Self Love Revolution, Department 26
7. https://sara-katherine.com/2021/11/self-discovery-relationships-and-dating/
8. Dating and The Road To Self Discovery, The Stories We Need To Hear, 2021
9. The Millennial Self Love Revolution, Department 26
10. Ru Paul Millennial Icon, USA Today, April, 2018
11. https://www.google.com/url?
q=http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/3005/1/Davies_Amy_2020_MDES_SFI_MRP.pdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1656443280220236&usg=AOvVaw0YGRM95L86fieZKo5mqL
12. Tinder, You're Not For Everyone, YouTube comments
13. Youtube Data, 2022
14. Youtube Data, 2022
15. Youtube Data, 2022
16. Client Supplied Data, 2022
17. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tinder-statistics/#:~:text=Tinder%20had%2010.7%20million%20subscribers,over%2075%20million%20active%20users..

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