Strategies from "Tinder's Swipe Night Campaign" to Create Impactful Online Experiences
Unlock the prowess of digital immersive campaigns
Welcome to 6 new Scrappy subscribers. We are at 46 brilliant people who love to read exciting polymath approach to business. I am trying to shift the focus of the essays to niche-specific topics like product-market fit, the impact of consumerism in financial markets etc. These are just some of the many ideas I am looking to explore and I wanted to keep you in my creative loop. Also, I’ll be soon shipping my first “happiness project” essay which I have been working on for the past 6 months.
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Let’s dive into this week’s essay. I wrote this essay quite a while ago when the world was going digital. I am sharing this now as the world is going hybrid as we come out of the pandemic and it could be hyper-useful to create impact.
Digital events, campaigns, boot camps, workshops, international zoom meetings etc have been on the rise in the digital world of the 21st century, even more so with the rampant COVID-19 lockdowns.
The undeniable demands of lockdown and the necessity of marketing your business in the advent of the crisis has made digital prowess an undeniable tool to have in every marketer and entrepreneur’s arsenal.
Is this article useful for YOU?
I include this section :
To be cautious of not wasting your time because I have been a victim of clickbait headlines way too many times !
Through this article, we will talk about:
1.An immersive digital campaign by Tinder.
2.Understand the strategy & the reasoning behind it.
3.Learn to apply these strategies for your own digital campaigns.
PS: We are not going to talk about content marketing!
Introduction
Tinder is the world’s most popular app for meeting new people. Tinder describes itself as “your most dependable wingmate — wherever you go, we’ll be there”.
In the “app” world, when brands tell their consumers “how” and “when” the app can be leveraged, it adds immense potential to users.
Tinder has been doing a great job at it since 2014, by communicating :
“If you’re here to meet new people, expand your social network, meet locals when you’re traveling, or just live in the now, you’ve come to the right place. We spark more than 26 million matches per day”.
Problem Statement
Tinder became a globally used term in a short span of term and became the market leader despite facing fatigue due to increased competition in the niche.
The problem is not the competition but the strong urge of human beings to meet new people and spark connections. We are not going to stick to just one app for that.
If people are unable to meet their dating expectations through one app, they jump to another one, because it is definitely easier than pointing the finger at oneself.
It’s (almost) impossible to change the above mentioned human behavior, which is why it’s rather better to make things interesting in the app.
Campaign
Swipe Night is a weekly series consisting of 5 min long episodes. Each episode is an in-app digital immersive experience. It offers choices to the user and propels the story leading to further forks on the road. Every choice is stored in the profile and acts as a conversation starter with other Tinder users.
You can view the YouTube trailer video of the campaign here:
Psych (why it worked)
Some of the reasoning why SwipeNight worked so splendidly are:
Easy in-app participation.
Leveraging tech-savvy GEN-Z.
Luring in through rewards.
A promise to an interesting. etc.
Let’s dwell further beyond the surface to unearth reasonings.
1) The Power of Narration
Have you ever wondered, how we can sit through movies in one sitting which go on for more than 2 hours whereas we cannot sit through a book or an article or even a class lecture(even if they are interesting) for more than 12 min?
Aspects of movies like screenplay, direction, motion graphics etc are embedded with a deep sense of influencing the audience.
To give an example, screenplays or scripts follow a three-act structure(though, not always).
Three act structure is a powerful tool in the arsenal of scriptwriters.
Swipe-Night follows the three-act structure to keep the audience engaged.
Swipe-Night ACT I
Every adventure on Swipe-Night starts with a party happening somewhere in the city and a description of current standing. It further progresses by describing the end mission and giving the audience momentum to enter ACT II.
Swipe-Night ACT II
ACT II usually consists of various obstacles to overcome and choices to make.
The second act is filled with fun instances like punching/complimenting Riverdale hart Denton, leaving a tip for the musicians playing while the world is ending etc.
Swipe-Night ACT III
The final act brings you closer to the mission ending defined in the first act.
It also embraces more thrill and spontaneity to keep the audience at the edge of their seat.
The final act tries to bring in powerful emotions like friendship, sadness, happiness and heroism to make a compelling climax in every swipe night adventure.
Use this how?
The three act structure is a very powerful narration tool. You can leverage this while writing your social media captions, stories, building campaigns, digital ads etc.
You can definitely also use this to communicate your brand story in an effective way.
Share this essay with a marketer to help them achieve better campaigns:
2) Innovative, Immersive & First of its kind Experience
The beauty of taking a risk is, it can fall on either end of the spectrum.
One end is courage and the other end is fear. More often, we fall on the end of courage, more are the chances we have of succeeding.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
― Helen Keller, The Open Door
Swipe-Night was a daring campaign. It was creative, well planned and adventurous.
I wouldn’t say that it was an original idea(creative marketing in the gaming industry have done quite a few bits similar to this) but the execution was original and one of a kind.
Use this how?
I very often dare you to take risks, get creative and explore beyond the horizon. While taking Creative risks, always plan well for the downside, use the best strategy and behavioral tools to ensure success.
3) Rewarding Participation ( why should the audience participate )
The first and most important question while designing any piece of content or a participative campaign is: Why would the audience engage with the content or participate in the campaign?
Swipe-Night achieved the “why” through three steps:
a. Appealing to why consumers use the Tinder app
The objective of consumers using Tinder as we discussed in the introduction is quite simple: to meet new people.
Swipe-Night campaign’s main objective was to use preferences and choices opted by the audience to help them meet new people and connect with them.
b. Empathetic Ice-breaker
The biggest hindrance in meeting new people online is solved by using a double opt-in feature of Tinder, which is basically “consent from both ends”.
The second biggest concern/ hindrance is the ice breaker which has been addressed by the campaign.
I think Swipe-Night outcomes might be only second to “have you met Ted” as an ice-breaker. The Swipe-Night endings are published on participant’s profiles, offering them an empathetic ice breaker to connect and talk about with fellow participants.
c. Common Values
People sharing common values have more chances of connecting than people who share common interests.
Keeping this in mind, Swipe-Night offers the audience to make tons of value-based choices which are also shown on their profile in the end, which further helps consumers to connect with like-minded people.
d. Peak End Rule
A psychological heuristic says that people judge experiences based on how they felt at their peak.
In simple terms: ever dreaded while doing a trek only to feel completely enriched at the peak? That explains how the peak-end rule works.
To be honest, while watching videos of Swipe-Night, I imagined and immersed myself as if I was playing the game, even making choices, but I felt some of them were really boring.
Despite that, at the climactic scenes, I felt emotional surges and that’s when I realized how they have leveraged the peak-end rule.
Use this how?
Creating content on social media or endorsing ads or making creative campaigns : entrepreneurs always wonder how to make it viral. The secret to getting close to becoming viral is figuring out how to make people participate.
To make the audience participate, you definitely need to design a suitable reward mechanism for your brand/content/ad/everything where you want audience participations.
Now, we cannot call it a day without discussing the actual impact of the campaign, because seeing the impact, you would want to scroll up and read all the “use this how” bits to leverage them for your next campaign, and you definitely should.
I am hoping the essay helped you think, if it did, share this essay with your favourite person who loves to read about business.
Campaign Outcome
Swipe Night’s premiere had nearly 4x the viewership of Euphoria — HBO’s Gen Z hit. It also sparked a 1,600% increase in Twitter activity, a 26% increase in user matches and messages increased by 12%.
The company said Swipe Night led to a 20% to 25% increase in “likes” and a 30% increase in matches. The elevated conversation levels that resulted from user participation continued for days after each episode aired. Also importantly, the series helped boost female engagement in the app.
Clearly, Tinder benefited from the campaign more than the numbers dictate. The campaign got covered by various magazines, it won D&AD Wood & Graphite pencil awards and nominations for several others.
In fact, the campaign was so successful, it made me believe that I can write an article, derive learning from it and create value for entrepreneurs and creative minds like yours.
Further Notes
The world has been transitioning to everything digital. The process got sped unimaginably faster with the onset of COVID-19. Not only that, but it has become a necessity for businesses now.
The big retail business giants like J Crew, Gold’s Gym, Neiman Marcus, J.C Penney and many more have filed for bankruptcy due to the current circumstances.
Out of the few ways left for brands, one of them is to figure out digital while maintaining the immersive experience of retail experience.
Thank you for reading, see you in the next one!