IF I WAS: Bumble

Bumble released a new redesign of their app with this cheeky spot! Based on the insight that finding your partner is exhausting, a woman joins a convent because she's so fed up with dating.

The app update emphasizes one huge crucial move: women on Bumble no longer have to make the first move.

If I was the social media manager for Bumble, this is how I would have activated the campaign.

After analyzing their content, here is what I think they were getting at:

Insight: Dating apps are exhausting and finding your partner has become a tiring chore rather than the meet-cutes we fantasize about.

Strategy: Bumble isn't exhausting. The men are.

A pretty straight forward campaign that emphasizes product-is-the-solution to your problems.

I enjoyed this creative, but I wouldn't have linked it with their app redesign. This is what I would have done instead.

First things first, there's general frustration on social that there was all this noise for a minimal change.

Ensuring the product matches the marketing is crucial - you can only be unserious, unhinged etc if you have a great product (or update) to back it up. Of course, marketing teams generally have minimal say in this, but it's important to think about working in cohesion with product teams, especially when hyping up a change to the user experience.

??DISCLAIMER ??

Before you nitpick my half-baked ideas, this is creative fairyland. Unlimited budget, minimal legalities etc. I believe all ideas can be scaled back, but can't as easily be scaled up.

So, even if these ideas aren't executable as is, there are versions of them that could make it past legal and finance.

I would have used this creative to promote Bumble for Friends and sisterhood - literally. Enter: The Bumblery.

The Bumblery would be Bumble's nunnery. The only convent that accepts women who are so exhausted that being a nun seems like the best option in face of the cesspool of dating apps. Leaning into self-deprecation while also making themselves the hero would be Bumble's perfect response to the haters of dating apps.

In the actual spot itself, I would have invested in using Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Najimy and Wendy Makenna - the iconic Sister Act trio. This homage to one of the most iconic films of all time would have been the perfect use of celebrity cameos.

To activate on social, this campaign needed to lean fully in on the joke. I'd partner with nuns of TikTok giving them the Bumble yellow veils and outfits from the TV spot. Let them do what they're already doing, just have them join the Bumblery.

And, to really celebrate sisterhood, send PR packages with Bumble yellow nunnery outfits to iconic sister duos/besties on TikTok and celebrities: Alix Earle & Ashtin Earle, Avery Woods & Emilie Kiser, Meghan Trainor & Chris Olsen, Kendall & Kylie.

Everyone has a story of heartbreak or sisterhood and could all lean into the joke so well. Imagine Kylie Jenner announcing her new bf is God because she's becoming a nun.

Not only would this content be iconic and borderline ridiculous, it would keep the joke alive that still keeps the message of "exhausted" on the forefront.

And if they used it for Bumble for Friends, it would spread the brand messaging that much more. With the minor app changes, this could have been a nice surprise and delight way to lead people to the product and self-discovery. This would be a great solution instead of making a direct product-driven campaign that led to backlash over the lack of change.

Here are some tweets:

All of these tweet concepts could probably be turned into viral video content in one way or another, but if we need one more idea for TikTok...

To lean into the nun joke, Bumble's TikTok should post a story time of "I made my Bumble profile a nun as a test and I still PULLED these mfs ??"

The creator could expose the wack men she pulled in her DMs, because well we all know the world has some interesting dudes.

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? Howdy, I'm Zaria! I'm the Global Social Media Manager at Duolingo - aka the passive aggressive owl. I'm responsible for the growth of @Duolingo's TikTok account from 50K to 5M followers by myself and building out a team that's brought it to 11M followers today. I've built a social-first brand and want you to be able to as well. Follow along for my weekly newsletters!