It’s been weeks since everything happened, but I still can’t get my mind off it. I’ve tried everything: I’ve unfollowed their socials, spent quality time with friends, and even upped my time in nature. Nothing seems to work.
I can’t stop thinking about Bumble and its disastrous brand fumble.
In April the popular dating app announced the start of its promising rebrand campaign. Deleting all but one post from the Bumble Instagram, the company teased a brighter, more palatable experience for its online daters—spurring a wellspring of excitement with the marketing equivalent of an internet catfish.
From there, it was all downhill. Alongside an underwhelming product update that did little to address users’ needs, Bumble released a series of advertisements with messaging that not only outraged its user base but undermined its very identity as a female-friendly dating app.
Bumble is not the first company to rush a rebrand, and it certainly won’t be the last. Frankly, some of us at Hencove are still reeling from the loss of Twitter (its sudden switch to X was as abrupt and haphazard a rebrand as any). So, why am I so hung up on the Bumble brand fumble?
Next to millennials, Gen Zers make up the largest percentage of Bumble’s user base, and yet they’re also among the most dissatisfied with the digital matchmaking scene. It’s the classic paradox of choice: nothing makes the dating pool feel more barren than its infinite access to eligible strangers and cheesy pickup lines. And at a time when users desperately needed a promising change, Bumble failed to deliver on several counts.
Whether B2C or B2B, success relies on the ability to know a brand, its goals, the problems to solve, and who will gain value from it. Although rebranding a business can pay significant dividends, the process shouldn’t be hasty or half-baked. With careful planning, a clear purpose, plenty of research, and hefty doses of collaboration among internal stakeholders, rebranding can evolve your company and signal positive change. But first, you’ll have to check all the right boxes.
Although your company’s target audience may differ from a dating app’s, the same rebrand rules apply. And Bumble’s fumble is a helpful reminder of what not to do.
Strike One: Missing the Mark on Messaging
One of the company’s most glaring miscalculations occurred in its high-level messaging. Which is to say, its marketing team really failed to read the room. At the start of its campaign, Bumble declared its mission to revitalize modern dating with a “wake-up call,” something many users regarded with excitement. But when the app released billboards and video ads mocking celibacy as an alternative to dating and celebrating the “new Bumble,” those butterflies quickly vanished. Many users found the ads reductive, taking offense at what seemed like disregard for the importance of bodily autonomy following recent rollbacks in reproductive rights—signaling a clear misalignment between the company’s intention and its ultimate impact.
When it comes to rebranding, companies need messaging that both aligns with and adds momentum to their greater purpose. The key to transforming and advancing your brand begins with understanding where your brand is and what it will be. This requires a healthy measure of consistency—something that’s impossible to achieve when a business says one thing and then tends to do another.
Strike Two: All Talk and No Action
Aside from the messaging misfire, users’ biggest gripe with the Bumble rebrand was its seeming lack of awareness and understanding around its community’s frustrations with modern dating. While many successful rebrands involve reevaluating company values and shifting your messaging, vision, and mission accordingly, it’s important to stand by those statements and act within the guidelines of your updated brand.
In Bumble’s case, those statements fell flat. At its onset the campaign evoked numerous shared pain points around the ills of online dating, ostensibly to the effect of empathizing with its audience and marketing the rebrand as a cause for optimism. And yet, in practice, the app did little to improve user experience—delivering minor design changes, adding the option for an “opening move,” and removing a key differentiating feature in which only female users could initiate messages in opposite-sex matches.
When executing a rebrand, it’s important for any company—whether you’re selling data, dates, or dates (the fruit)—to follow through on the goals you set and take actions that substantiate your messaging. Even as they evolve, businesses need to lean into the facets that make them unique, lest they risk confusing or alienating their audience.
Strike Three: Rushing In for the Wrong Reasons
Rebrands happen all the time, and for a variety of reasons. Maybe your company needs a new identity that better aligns with your updated mission. Or perhaps you’ve decided to refresh your messaging in response to industry shifts. Whatever the case may be, it’s important that you differentiate between business problems that require an entire rebrand and those that require a more acute—and less expensive—fix.
Although rebrands can help your company put itself in front of the right people, they shouldn’t be used as a Band-Aid for sales slumps or low awareness. For Bumble, the main push to rebrand read largely as a response to the cultural shift away from dating apps—a factor that, although considerable, compelled the company to overpromise and underdeliver.
So, be patient, mind the red flags, and take your time. When the right rebrand strategy comes along, you’ll know it’s the one.
