Evoking the digital cupids: Gen leads with Tinder on St. Valentine’s Day.
Ahh, it’s here again. Pink plush. Grandeur gestures of affection. Advertisers flooding upon our poor souls a tsunami of unmistakably plain corniness. It is a big day for couples, but perhaps even a bigger of a day for businesses. Indeed, it is no secret that businesses all over the world mark 14th February on their calendars. But despite being the Bulgarian escape room leader, for our client Dextrophobia, St.Valentine’s Day has been an annual disappointment for the past three years. So what’s the problem?
Well, the elephant in the room is the fact that couples simply would not spend St. Valentine’s Day in an escape room. Because even though solving the puzzle of the room as an allegory for solving the mystery of love could sound pretty poetic on paper, just imagine your partner’s face when you solemnly announce to her that this year you had opted for some SAW-style adventure instead of a dinner in a fancy place. But this year Dextrophobia were determined to flip the script and we had our hands full with a rebus to be solved in its own right- fill up their escape rooms on St. Valentine’s Day. How we did it?
Dextrophobia’s rooms might never be able to beat nice wine in a nice restaurant, but there can be lurking Cupids in there as well. And just because single people seem to be drastically overlooked on St. Valentine’s Day, it doesn’t mean they’re not secretly buzzing about it. So yes, we figured we’d be gunning for the single people instead of couples this time around. Let’s find the people for whom love on St. Valentine’s Day is but a mystery, yet one which they would be willing to solve. But where to find those people for whom love is but a conundrum? TINDER. Naturally. Okay, that was easy. But what’s next?
Blind dates, anyone? Blind dates in escape rooms on St. Valentine’s Day? Tinder blind dates in escape rooms on St. Valentine’s Day? This is exactly the outrageous idea we came up with.
Here’s how we utilized the dating app. First off, two profiles were created — one male and one female. When those profiles were right-swiped, users were redirected to a mobile landing page where they got to choose their preferred Dextrophobia room as well as a convenient time slot for their future blind date. Whenever there was a match, i.e. two people whose respective dating preferences along with time and place preferences were overlapping, the system was sending out automated confirmation messages to both sides. The blind date was then on. Time to get a room you two.
Consequently, the interest we have generated was high enough for us to go over the mobile landing page as we actually had to boost it in order to handle all the bookings. On top of that, we had to extend the campaign for three more days following St Valentine’s Day so that everyone that wished could try out their own luck.
‘’Blind date’’ went on to win awards in 5 categories at the Bulgarian edition of IAB Mixx Awards this year: Bronze for Campaign Effectiveness, Silver for Lead Generation, Silver for Mobile Apps, Bronze for Brand Awareness and Silver in the Brave category.
Our client was happy. proof. was happy. Hit it!
