Bumble sought to win back women, but a ‘celibacy’ ad outraged them instead. How the dating app’s rebrand went wrong

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Columbia University faculty pass a no-confidence vote against president Minouche Shafik, U.S. moms are leading a surge in part-time workers, and this is how Bumble's rebrand veered off course. Have a restorative weekend.

- Bumble's stumble. Bumble's announcement late last month of a product relaunch and rebrand was meant to herald a new era for the decade-old dating app founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd. Bumble was long known as the platform where women "make the first move," due to an in-app requirement that women send the initial message to men in heterosexual pairings. But Bumble changed that feature to allow women to pre-set an opening question rather than send a message every time. The product tweaks seemed to go over well, but the accompanying ad campaign has been another story.

A refresh was needed. Consumers are fatigued after years of swiping, and making the first move—once empowering—had became "a burden to a subset of our customers," new Bumble Inc. CEO Lidiane Jones told me.

Bumble attempted to lean into daters' weariness with edgier-than-usual taglines. One billboard read, "You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer." "We wanted to take a fun, bold approach in celebrating the first chapter of our app’s evolution," chief marketing officer Selby Drummond said in a press release at the time. (The campaign was developed by Bumble's in-house creative team.) When I wrote about Bumble's relaunch in late April, I mentioned that billboard because it caught my attention as a new tone for the app whose best-known ad was previously, "Be the CEO your parents always wanted you to marry."

It caught users' and followers' attention, too. Photos and videos of and about the advertisement spread on social media last weekend along with outrage. Users and followers said that the ad shamed them for choosing not to have sex, a stance that has gained traction globally, especially among Gen Z. There's the 4B movement in South Korea, in which women reject marriage, childbirth, dating, and sex (all four words start with the letter B in Korean). There's going "boysober," a rejection of men and dating that became a TikTok trend. Just this week, a story in The Cut dives into a sex strike among ultra-Orthodox Jewish women. There are plenty of other reasons people abstain from sex, from trauma to asexuality to ongoing threats to abortion rights.

Bumble apologized and took down the celibacy-related ads Monday night. "We made a mistake. Our ads referencing celibacy were an attempt to lean into a community frustrated by modern dating, and instead of bringing joy and humor, we unintentionally did the opposite," the company said in a statement. Bumble said it would donate to the National Domestic Violence Hotline and other groups and offer its now-vacant ad space to those organizations.

The celibacy ads might have angered people no matter which brand posted them, but they seemed to really hit a nerve coming from Bumble. Women have associated Bumble with empowerment in what can be a bleak market for daters. Even when users tired of swiping on Bumble's app—70% of women reported fatigue in a Bumble survey—many still recognized Bumble as a brand that respected women and their choices. Bumble gained that reputation through its marketing and its support of causes like anti-cyberflashing laws.

Implying that celibacy is not a valid choice didn't seem right coming from the brand. Nor did its "you know full well" language—forceful, didactic phrasing.

Bumble seems to be taking a breather from its rebrand as it recovers from this setback. The next time the brand attempts to make a splash, it should stick closer to its roots.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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