Boomtown Swipes Right On Ground-Breaking Tinder Campaign

The Big Rainbow Project, which was delivered during the recent Pride Season, including the World Pride festival, gave Tinder its best-ever brand-perception results in Australia and helped the business connect with regional LGBTQIA+ audiences.

Tinder used unique insights about regional Australians’ desire for connection to create an innovative, dynamic campaign that encouraged the Gen Z LGBTQIA+ community to connect and celebrate with their community nationwide.

The campaign’s centrepiece was the installation of the “Big Rainbow” – a lasting symbol of pride and inclusion. Tapping into Australia’s obsession with “big” tourist icons, Tinder launched a nationwide vote to ask Australia which regional town the large-scale landmark should live in.

Following a 16,000-strong response to the nationwide vote, Victoria’s Daylesford was selected as the Big Rainbow’s new home, notably for its strong history of supporting the LGBTQIA+ community via its annual ChillOut Festival.

To support the campaign, a “Virtual Big Rainbow” was also established within the Tinder app. Location-based parameters, which recommend members to each other based on their location, were temporarily disabled, allowing people from across Australia to connect in real-time.

Additionally, Tinder rolled out national social media, digital ads and PR, that celebrated the lives of regional Australians from the LGBTQIA+ community. Tinder shared the stories of three diverse app members who grew up in regional Australia, amplifying them across YouTube, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat during Pride Season.

The three-phase campaign delivered record success for the app, giving Tinder its best-ever brand perception results in Australia, including a more than 15-point lift on key brand perception measures. It also notched up record-breaking uplift scores and more than 200 PR hits, with 100 per cent positive sentiment.

“Tapping into the unmet needs of regional Australian audiences delivered perception lifts that were higher than any brand campaign we’ve ever done in Australia,” said Tinder country director, Kristen Hardeman.

“[It just shows] there is the opportunity for marketing and brands to cut through more in regional areas. Obviously, the urban centres are cluttered environments where people are getting bombarded with messaging all the time. It’s not the same in the regions, so it’s critical for brands to rethink regional audiences and to find ways to get their messages to them”.

For brands considering Boomtown campaigns in 2024, Hardeman recommends investing in uncovering compelling regional insights, and using them to shape every element of the campaign. In Tinder’s case, it was the knowledge that regional-based LGBTQIA+ members are at risk of social isolation, active prejudice, discrimination, and exclusion that drove the app to create an inclusive, community-driven offering.

“It’s important to try to understand if regional Australians’ experiences with your product or category is different from the way people in urban centres are experiencing that product. ‘Are there any unmet needs in the regions your products can help meet?’ [With this campaign], we wanted to do something with true meaning to give the LGBTQIA+ community more visibility, recognition and something that stands for them. We wanted to play a more meaningful role helping them connect with others like them”.

Tinder’s results follow Boomtown’s recently launched ‘Uncapped and Untapped’ campaign, designed to encourage the nation’s marketers to put regional media advertising in their new year plans.

“Tinder’s groundbreaking media campaign demonstrated the potential for impressive brand uplifts in regional Australia,” said Boomtown chairman, Brian Gallagher.

“We are thrilled to see Tinder’s Boomtown campaign delivering the best brand-perception results the app has ever recorded in Australia. It just shows the power of regional Australians to get behind brands that really make the effort to connect with them in a genuine way,” Gallagher said.

“Tinder has taken an insights-based approach to its Boomtown campaigns, and it’s paid dividends – regional Australians are ready and waiting for brands to communicate with them and they appreciate campaigns that recognise the unique characteristics of different regions”.

“Now is the time for brands across the country to shift their thinking to regional Australia and make plans to connect with the 9.6 million people living in Boomtown”.