Melissa Hobley has been chief marketing officer of dating app Tinder for two years. She sees her role as embedded with the company’s mission, which makes her a kind of “chief connections officer.”
“The mission of Tinder is to power and inspire connection for everyone,” explains Hobley. “My job is to bring that mission to life. Dating is hard and connection is hard and it doesn’t matter who you are or where you live, it’s hard. What we think about every day is how do we help connect people and help them to feel seen?”
Tinder is the No. 1 dating app in more than 130 countries, supporting millions of daters all over the world. The app counts three billion swipes a day on average.
“We pay a lot of attention to, do you feel awesome about who you are, straight, queer, trans, non-binary, young, old, short, tall,” she says.
The company recently debuted a new iteration of its brand campaign “It Starts with a Swipe.” The campaign humorously recreates cliche scenes from romantic comedies with a modern day twist. The underlying message is that while life may not recreate the movies, dating apps can provide sweet and happy beginnings.
“We used real conversations from couples that met on Tinder that are still together. The idea is that people meet every day on Tinder and they turn into real beautiful romances. Don’t wait for the movie,” explains Hobley.
Brand Innovators caught up with Hobley from her office in New York to talk building connections, the importance of IRL (“in real life”) and why most relationships don’t start like rom-coms. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
As the CMO, what is your role to help build these connections?
My job is to tell stories of connection and to think about product features. We have a massive team and their only job is to keep you safe as you’re dating digitally and as you’re going out in real life. My job is to tell those stories. The best part of my job is understanding culturally what’s keeping you from getting together.
For example, Japan has a very big economy and a very exciting and interesting city in Tokyo. It’s the largest city in the world, yet the gay rights movement is decades behind the U.S. You don’t see women in positions of leadership. The impact of that and the connection with dating is incredibly real. If you think about if I can’t show up as my authentic self, if I can’t show I’m gay and I can’t have my boyfriend on my Instagram with me, what does that mean? It’s both the fun and challenging part of my job to understand what it is like to date in your part of the world and reflect it back in our marketing, product, partnerships, events and all the IRL stuff we’re doing.
How do you navigate that global local balance?
You have to be very humble about where a culture is on dating, on connection, on sex. You have to be very humble about that. The global, local decisions, tensions, opportunities, challenges exist no matter what your category is. But in dating it’s particularly interesting because you have to really understand where dating is in that place. So much of what we do is about where women are, how much agency and autonomy they have.
Even the word dating does not exist in most languages. That’s how new dating is. If you think about courtship or marriage, for most of civilization, women have had very little say. And so in different cultures, in different parts of the world, that journey and those experiences are so different. The global, local questions get very interesting very quickly. The best way to manage that is to listen and ask a ton of questions and to stay as humble as you can.
Can you talk about the strategy behind the “It Starts with a Swipe” effort?
“It Starts with a Swipe” was Tinder’s first global narrative and it worked really well. We have done a few iterations of that campaign. It’s really about how a swipe can change your life for whatever kind of connection you want. We are really passionate about no judgment. You want to meet someone while you’re in your gap year and you’re traveling? Great. You want to meet your forever person? Great.
Forty percent of people on Tinder are looking for something serious. We’ve been shedding this hookup narrative, talking about all the connections we drive. We wanted to build on that, but do something a little bit differently. There’s been this narrative out there of, “I want the rom-com experience” but that’s not how a lot of people meet. You can have that feeling, that experience of butterflies, but most of those stories are not starting like a rom-com. They’re starting on Tinder.
What are some of the other challenges of running a dating app business?
We’re in a digital era, an era of instant gratification. You want ramen at 2 am in New York City? No problem. What kind? Vegan, beef, chicken, seafood? I got you. You want to get a car, a loan, a flight, a house, a roommate? You have access to that in moments. People expect that with love. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t work like that. Think of your closest friend in the world. You built that relationship over time. Women in particular are often negatively impacted by rom coms and Disney fairy tales.
We’re also spending too much time in digital that our communication skills are suffering a bit. When I started my career, I had to call everyone. Everything was in person. COVID accelerated and exacerbated some of those challenges. We have generations of people that are so heads down on their phone. How do you inspire connection deliberately?
How has your background at brands like Walgreens and OK Cupid helped shape your perspective in your current role?
If you last in marketing for a while, you’re taking your experiences and what worked properly and what didn’t work and you’re pulling that through to where you are today. It was such a benefit to have been at OKCupid for over five years before coming to Tinder because I knew the category. I knew the challenges. I had so many conversations about love and dating and sex and connection. The first 10 years of my career was in comms. It was so powerful. It was more powerful than an MBA because it taught me how to tell stories quickly, how to get someone’s attention, how to figure out what’s special about this startup, this founder, this brand.
And I’ve had some incredible mentors along the way. Donna Sturgess was the global head of innovation at Glaxosmithkline. She was one of the only women at a senior level. She taught me the power of being curious above all things. Why is it important that this cereal box be open with your right hand? Because women were opening it and they had a baby on a hip. So give me products that I can open with one hand. Give me a toothpaste tube that I can open with one hand and you’ll change the engagement and the love and the affinity for that brand and that product. Being curious is the most important thing in marketing. The minute you stop asking questions is the minute the work really starts to suffer.
