Dating app fatigue. It’s real. Bumble, Tinder and Hinge all lost ground last year – demonstrated by staff layoffs and in Bumble’s case a decline in its shares value. A 2025 survey from Forbes Health and OnePoll found 78% of all users and 79% of Gen Z have experienced dating app burnout.
But people still want to believe in love and Bumble’s new brand campaign is betting on real life success stories – a tried and once true formula for the genre, to revive its fortunes. The campaign, For the Love of Love, created by Bumble’s in-house creative studio, Special US, and Arena Media, aims to excite people with the idea that they’ll find real, meaningful relationships on Bumble. It is built on a YouGov survey, that revealed 55% of people believe dating apps can lead to real love, and 45% know someone who’s found love on a dating app.
The full campaign, running globally until early December, leads with OOH ads shot by photographer, The Collective You, who captured real Bumble couples from around the world. It includes an app refresh, with new features including photo verification, personalised recommendations, and a dating advice hub featuring more than 40 pieces of content from relationship experts such as Jillian Turecki, Shan Boodram and Kier Gaines. Installations will feature handwritten letters, wedding invitations, and baby photos from former users who found love on the app…
…and because IRL is what people still believe in years of Covid stripped them of it, the campaign emphasises the importance of in-person connections by hosting invite-only singles nights in cities like New York, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Madrid, and Mumbai.
Lastly, there will be tie-ups with podcasts including The Mel Robbins podcast, Goop, and We Can Do Hard Things, as well as editorial partnerships with The New York Times and Vogue.
The campaign is not dissimilar to Hinge’s ongoing work, also telling true love stories that began on its app. But Tinder has just gone down a different road, capturing the hopefulness of singles with the mad exhilaration of a crush.
