The Great Bumble Fumble
Et tu Bumble? Beauties and (choosing) the bear.
A little over a week ago
and I chatted Bumble’s new redesign. We talked the visuals, the new in-app features, and the relevant and interesting insight that women were exhausted. Unfortunately, it seems like women won’t be getting rest any time soon, at least not at the hands of Bumble.Help I need background.
As part of their campaign to support their new refresh, Bumble had billboards in various cities that stated: Celibacy is not the answer.
Spoiler- that didn’t land well with their audience.
Let’s run it back to those insights. “Exhausted” meant a few things when it came to the people Bumble spoke to to inform their refresh. Women articulated being fed up with “dehumanizing” relationships with men. They highlighted religion-free celibacy “eras” and journeys. In fact, many of them said not having sex with men made them feel empowered and helped them heal.
As someone who leads focus groups and writes insights by day and is a frustrated Bumble user by night, there’s so much here to dive into. Sure, they laddered it all up to “exhaustion” but the context of that choice is valuable and telling of wider mindset shifts happening in adult women today. That context could inform the future of the apps— or the future of partnership.
So what went wrong?
In my opinion, Bumble was operating in an echo chamber. Not vetting ideas against people out of house or with consumers is a risk. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t. Having culturally fluent or culturally intelligent people on brand teams is crucial, and it seems to be the biggest miss here. To put it simply, Bumble was (maybe) listening to their audience but they weren’t hearing them.
The case for culture.
Yeah, yeah. I’m biased, my day job is quite literally cultural strategy. I do the best I can to help brands avoid this shit. Being aware of the cultural climate is important as humans and wildly necessary as brands. Here are some things that went ignored:
Growing tension around women’s bodily autonomy + the 4B movement.
For more context, the 4B movement started in Korea. The 4 B’s or “nos” are as follows:
no sex with men
no child-rearing
no dating men
no marriage with men
The 4B movement is meant to serve as a direct opposition to South Korea’s patriarchal state and combat its pro-natalist policies, which view women’s bodies and reproductive abilities as tools for the state’s future. Feminists who engage in the 4B movement are known to actively resist the various ways in which gendered expectations are enforced in a conservative society, specifically relating to child-rearing, relationships, and employment. This resistance involves not only withdrawing from dating but also rejecting prevalent gendered beauty standards and their associated consumerist practices in South Korea.
Similar sentiment is being adopted (largely thanks to social media) globally, especially among American women.
The loneliness epidemic (especially the male loneliness epidemic) + increased violence against women.
Conversation around the male loneliness epidemic ranges from meaningful dialogue around men’s mental health to increased violence toward women who seemingly don’t want to “settle.” (Think incels+)
Influencers on Tiktok began saying, “et tu, Bumble?” Vocalizing a sense of betrayal from an app that has always been about putting women first. This creator articulates how women have been fighting pressure from all angles to fall into antiquated societal roles and now Bumble has become one of those forces— effectively guilting them into sex. Bleak!
A half-baked but relevant aside to this has been the ongoing “man or bear” discourse on Tiktok. TLDR; men asked women if you had to be alone in the woods, would you choose to be with a man or a bear? I’m going out on a limb here assuming men thought this would be an easy ego boost for them. Boy were they in for it.
There’s thousands on thousands of videos of women articulating legitimate (and truthfully sad and scary) reasons they’d feel safer with a bear in the woods than a man. And the men receiving these videos? Their responses have only proven women’s point.
Okay, back to culture.
These are very present and very pressing cultural conversations happening right now. This approach, this advertisement, and frankly, this attitude don’t meet that conversation at all. In fact, its just facilitated the negative.
Great marketing doesn’t solve the worlds problems. A dating app refresh may not fix dating or the inherent struggles of what it means to be a person who dates men. But okay marketing at least understands their consumer and that consumers’ challenges.
A moment for one big sigh together.
As of today (5/13 at 8PM) Bumble has issued an apology stating:
Find the full apology here.
If you take anything away from this let it be these:
Women deal with entirely too much.
Cultural fluency is important.
