New Delhi: Dating apps are leveraging celebrities, movies and web shows to spark conversations and engage users, stepping beyond traditional advertising channels to widen their market. The platforms are using a mix of videos, images, text, and illustrations to drive their social media strategies on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube.
Tinder has a show titled Swipe Ride on JioCinema, and has tied up with a character from Netflix’s upcoming original The Archies to promote a new feature. Gleeden is streaming a podcast on Spotify and conducting street interviews in Delhi. Spending on these activities can vary between 2% and 10% of marketing budgets, depending on season and messaging.
Tinder collaborated with influencers and celebrities such as Kusha Kapila, Swara Bhasker, Rashmika Mandanna, Pooja Bhatt, Uorfi Javed, Zeenat Aman and Janhvi Kapoor for Swipe Ride that premieres on Tinder’s YouTube channel and JioCinema. Last August, Tinder had also launched a short film around consent and safe dating and has recently collaborated with DOT., a character from Netflix’s The Archies film, to spotlight Incognito Mode, a feature which offers Tinder subscribers the ability to maintain control over their visibility.
“As our core target audience evolves from millennials to Gen Z, our goal is to always stay relevant and offer the best experience to them, following their habits and behaviours. Our partnerships thus revolve around our users, keeping their interests and insights at the heart of everything we do, whether it is interests such as food, music, travel or pop-culture trends,” Anukool Kumar, marketing director, Tinder India, said.
When the Barbenheimer trend—a reference to the interest Hollywood films Barbie and Oppenheimer released in July raised—had gone viral, Tinder had brought out social media posts encouraging users to check if their potential matches were fans of the two movies.
Snehil Khanor, CEO and founder of TrulyMadly, said the platform makes it a point to put out a lot of informational content around dating and relationships through Instagram or YouTube videos.
“A lot of content that dating companies are creating tends to be snacky, but we’re hoping to come up with something that adds value to the user, because the idea is not just to get views which anyway doesn’t help in the long term,” Khanor said, while adding that the service has done its share of moment marketing by collaborating with Amazon Prime Video original Made In Heaven.
Meanwhile, Gleeden, a dating application for married individuals, runs a podcast on Spotify and had carried out street interviews in New Delhi, to hear from people about their thoughts on infidelity and non-monogamous relationships that are currently published on Instagram. It has also collaborated with comedians such as Jeeveshu Ahluvalia and Munawar Faruqui.
“Social media (Instagram and YouTube) is definitely the place to be as these are the channels that best deliver your message and put you in touch directly with your target. They also allow the most creativity, since you can play with different formats such as video, text, pictures, illustration and so on,” Sybil Shiddell, country manager for Gleeden India said.
Dating services agree engaging users across social media is a different ball game than just regular advertising and mastering this art isn’t easy.
“We try to create and post relatable content which helps show our audience the human side of our approach and that we are not just a brand,” said Ravi Mittal, founder and CEO of dating app QuackQuack. “We create content for Instagram, Facebook, X, and the most recent addition Threads. Over the past few years, we’ve done extensive social media campaigns and incorporated meme marketing, videos with YouTubers, integration in music videos, reels with influencers and also collaborated for a web-series. The key is to experiment and observe what works and repeat,” said Mittal, adding that Instagram is the current flavour as it has higher active user reach compared with other platforms.