I love this case because we were not only able to help change Tinder's suffering brand image, but also do something genuinely good in the world. An example of pure hustle to express the power of a big idea.
Tinder Inc. was based in L.A. and one of our creative's had a contact there. He put us in touch in 2018 and I was able to secure an opportunity to pitch for their global account. Unfortunately, we came second to Wieden & Kennedy Portland as they were worried about how an L.A. based company would be able to effectively work with a Sydney agency. But as they loved our pitch work so much, they asked us work to on a different project aimed at changing their brand perception. In fact, given we lost the pitch, the majority of my agency team didn't want to move ahead with the brief, but I was convinced this would be an great opportunity to show our strategic and creative capabilities on a global stage, so I made the call to press ahead. One our agency never regretted it as it was one of our most successful and awarded campaigns that year.
When I saw the first iteration of the idea, it was presented as a film, but I saw that the team had a 'side' idea of creating customised emoji and I instantly knew that, in fact, that should be the focus of our campaign. The film was fantastic and a necessary component, but it was the customised emoji idea that would make the campaign sing.
A good lesson in never giving up and having the confidence to push your team beyond their initial expectations.
#representlove
PR, Social
Tinder had lost control of its brand narrative. It was left to the media who coined it as ‘the hook up app’ and blamed it for everything from the demise of love to the rise in STDs. In fact, if you did a google search, you'd be hard pressed to find a positive article about Tinder outside of business metrics. But that’s not why it was invented. It was developed to help people meet and find love in the modern age. Tinder wanted to demonstrate its core values to the world once again.
We needed to change the conversation.
We realised that despite living in an age where love should have no barriers, a key mode of universal communication, emojis, was limited in its ability to portray universal love. In fact, around 5 billion emoji are sent every day of just about everything you can imagine. But one was missing. One a growing amount of Tinder users could identify with; the interracial couple emoji; if interracial couples wanted to represent their love online, their only option was a yellow one - considered by most to mean ‘white’.
So, as a brand that believes in love and connection in the digital age, we thought that Tinder could take up the mantle to champion the inclusion of interracial couple emoji in the Unicode Consortium. Not only would it demonstrate their commitment to fostering love in all its forms, but it would help users connect further both inside and outside its platform.
A PR & social campaign launched across 7 international markets that asked the question, “isn’t it time all love was represented?”. We encouraged users to go to change.org and pledge their support. The campaign also let anyone in the world turn themselves into an emoji. All they had to do was upload a picture of themselves with our #representlove hashtag from anywhere in the world and our design teams on three continents would get back to you.Our goal was 2,500 signatures. We became the largest emoji campaign on change.org of all time.
Click to play the case study
It was tweeted by celebrities from Nicole Ritchie to Alexis Ohanian, husband of Serena Williams, and was picked up by Vice, Wired, Fast Company, Vogue, High Snobiety, Mashable, The Independent, Hypebeast, and Newsweek, to name a few.
Click to see the launch film:
It takes a long time to navigate through Unicode, but one year on with over 50,000 signatures globally, Unicode announced in February 2019 that interracial couples would be included in the next consortium rollout and you can find them on your phone today.
We thanked all those who supported the cause with a full page ad in the NY Times and, for the first time in a long time, people and the media were talking about Tinder supporting love, not helping destroy it. The campaign even led to +17% new and re-downloads of the app during the campaign timeframe as the messages resonated not only with new users, but also with lapsed users who had deleted the app. Now that's showing the love.
And for the cherry on the cake, 17 December 2020 Dec. 17, 2020, a year after they first appeared on smartphone keyboards all over the world, interracial couple emojis are going from group chats to the hallowed halls of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Our #RepresentLove victory marked a major milestone that pushed for a more accurate reflection of relationships and the world and to have that movement recognised by the Smithsonian Institution...you can’t get much bigger than that!”