Too often when brands attach their name to movements such as World Pride they think the job is done as soon as the project is completed. But if you want to really cut through, brands need to think deeper.
Tinder’s panel titled ‘Tinder Paid For My Wedding – How Brand Can Show Up in a Big Way’ at Canne in Cairns unpacked authentic marketing engagement with the LGBTQ+ community.
To discuss the ways in which brands to do better and what needs to be addressed was; Tinder Australia’s country director Kristen Hardeman; content creator ‘Alright Hey’/Matt Hey; Heaps Gay, Queer Agency and Summer Camp founder & consultant Kat Dapper and host Michelle Melky, the creative director at Amplify sat down for an inspiring talk.
The Big Tinder Wedding celebrated five years of marriage equality in Australia by gifting two queer-identifying couples the wedding of their dreams.
“We thought that was something that really deserved to be celebrated,” Hardeman said.
“Then we thought hey we have quite a role to play here… So we decided to run a competition to find two queer couples who found love on Tinder and give them the most epic wedding.”
A series of Big Tinder Wedding ‘sizzle reels’ and mini trailer content was rolled out across TikTok, Youtube, Nine Now, Vevo and Snapchat to drive audiences back to the longer form Youtube series.
The key messaging behind the talk was not just to pump the tyres of last year’s campaign, but to highlight the ways marketers and brands can authentically engage people from not only the queer community but all minority groups in their advertising.
“Essentially what brands need to do is dedicate time and resources to finding out what the issues are for LGBTQ+ communities,” Dapper said.
“The easiest way to do that is to involve the community, consult the community and listen to the community, find out what those issues are and basically create an amazing campaign like the Tinder wedding.
“It was created in consultation with community, it was activated during pride but then it was live for 365 days a year, so talking about community through social content that whole time.”
Reinforcing the message that brands need to do more than just tick the box was content creator Matt Hey.
“There’s a lot more work that I expect from the brands I work with personally,” he said.
“If all you’ve done is hire a queer creator, great, you can tick that box, but we’re trying to go deeper now. We’re trying to fix that issue of being left out of campaigns or whatever it may have been.”
“Not only did Tinder tick the box by hiring me as a queer person to promote this online, it actually helps real people in our community, real everyday people which is why I was so excited to be a part of it because it literally changed people’s lives.”
Without dropping any names, Hey commented on his takeaways from World Pride in Sydney last year when some brands engaged his services when the timing was convenient, but have not since reached out.
Perhaps the reasoning is because they ticked the box?
The campaign itself soared to new heights for Tinder at a time where dating apps are well established, Hardeman explained.
“Our KPIs were very brand-led on this one,” she said.
“We wanted to shift our brand preference and key brand perceptions.”
“As much amazing product innovation as you do, if your brand loses relevance you’re kind of dead in the water.
“We saw some pretty incredible brand lift on this one. I think the most beautiful part was that yes, it resonated with the queer community in an incredible way but it also resonated so well with mainstream Gen Z.
“The campaign achieved multiple objectives at once, we had 10-point lifts in brand preference and 20-point lifts in brand perception changes. And then the engagement we got, we had some watch times on our episodes on Youtube that were average watch times of three minutes which we haven’t seen before in this world where everything is moving towards short-form content.”
Reporting by Zach Havard.
