Let’s put this into perspective for a second.
96 days is equivalent to 13.7 weeks or over three months. An entire university semester is only 12 teaching weeks. And seasons literally change within three months. Now imagine your partner went away for an extended Euro summer holiday for that amount of time.
Respectfully, that’s forever.
But that’s also the amount of time viewers spent watching our influencers’ content, when we partnered with Hinge to launch their “My Best Friend’s Take” campaign in early April.
More context before we dive in: Hinge is the dating app designed to be deleted.
It’s a brand tagline that lives in our heads rent-free, and after this campaign went live to ~6,000,000 followers, we’re pretty sure it stuck for others too.
An influencer campaign that was all about boosting confidence, updating profiles, and hyping up Hinge’s unmatched Voice Prompt feature, the brief was simple: Have your BFF tell the world why you’re amazing, oh-so dateable, and a real catch.
By spotlighting Hinge’s standout features, the goal of this campaign was clear and simple. Get more users meeting their future partner on Hinge.
Whether it’s downloading the app for the very first time, or redownloading upon renewed interest, either one would take us a step closer to Hinge’s goal – and by association, our goal, because entering into a partnership with us looks a lot like a good relationship.
Your goals, your visions, your dreams? We’re making it happen. Whatever you want.
Rather than a hard sell (because we all know that audiences today are hyper-aware about when they’re being advertised to), we focused on fun, camaraderie, humour, authenticity, and real friendship. All of which were intended to help users feel more confident and safe on Hinge, like a virtual space of good vibes – where maybe with the right concoction of prompts, you’ll find yourself with a new best friend… The romantic kind.
Our influencers didn’t just talk about Hinge or dating.
They created shareable, feel-good content that felt heartfelt, by showcasing the value of having a great best friend in your corner, and celebrating love in all its forms.
That all sounds well and good, but how exactly did we get this message across?
Your favourite rom-coms deliver that warm fuzzy feeling within two-ish hours. And in a sense, we were on a mission to do the exact same thing. Except under two minutes.
So, we called upon the influential influencer power of some familiar Australian content creators.
Sounds like a no-brainer, but for country-specific campaigns, you don’t just want to find creators from a particular location – you want their audiences to be from there as well.
This requires taking a look under the hood at how each creator performs on-platform AND how their audiences tend to interact too.
Via granular performance reports in our Sticki Discovery Tool, we’re able to analyse demographic breakdowns and audience data for all our creators. Yes, all.
From there, we landed on numbers just like the below:
Of the six million potential followers to reach, over 85% of our creators’ audiences were located on the ground in Australia, right where we wanted them.
Then it was time for some extra detective work.
We weren’t just on the hunt for some of Australia’s favourite creators, we were in search for creators who met our on-platform performance expectations (incl. engagement rates, growth metrics) – which is a sure-fire way to ensure your content performs well.
They also needed to openly speak about their dating life, plus have a recurring figure (or best friend, if you will) whom their followers wouldn’t be surprised to see make a guest appearance on influencer content to come.
Finally, the cherry on top. Our creators also needed to walk the walk beyond talking the talk (aka. have an active Hinge profile). Some criteria, huh!
But after scouring every corner of TikTok and Instagram within Australia, we settled on 13 prime candidates to help take this campaign to the next level.
You might know some of them:
Armed with questions like “What’s my biggest green flag?” / “What was your first impression of me?” and other open-ended Hinge voice prompts, creators commenced Operation “My BFF’s Take” – giving us content that was funny, moving, and authentic.
The goal was to make it feel like a convo between besties (that just so happened to include Hinge), and without scripts or pressure, the content flowed naturally.
With our i’s dotted and t’s crossed, it was time to sit back, relax, watch.
And it seems our audience did the same… For a whopping 96 straight days of view time.
Within just two weeks of our content pieces going live, this Hinge x Sticki influencer collaboration achieved:
These weren’t just passive video views either, given that the content generated:
And by granting influencers full creative freedom, we developed a suite of assets where every video was totally unique. Much like their friendships and winning personalities.
We won’t repeat the campaign’s total video watch time again (*kidding, we lie, it was almost 14 weeks) – but it’s safe to say that people were hooked.
And we’re about to unofficially boost this by sharing some of our campaign favourites:
Possibly the funniest contribution to this campaign, Mel & Sam from the multi-award-winning comedy duo “Mel & Sam” smashed it out of the park.
And of course, we love some good queer representation as well.
The duo gave us the perfect blend of comedic flair and vulnerability, divulging their quirks and positioning these as green flags for potential matches… Which they were!
Not to be dramatic, but if you didn’t laugh just a little watching this (or even just a nose exhale type of tee-hee), there might be something wrong with you. Sorry.
Mother knows best. Bonus points if your mother is hilarious AF.
By calling upon her mum as her chosen person, Gabby’s content delivered gold (maybe platinum, even) – because the inclusion of mum aligns with Gabby’s organic posts and is as native as it gets. Everyone loves a returning character!
From a numbers standpoint, Gabby’s video also generated one of our higher watch times, averaging 19 seconds with an impressive 11.69% of viewers watching the full thing. Also a 9.83% engagement rate? What a dream.
“My name is Aicha, and I approve this message.” Preach, so do we.
When your best friend has both the voice and personality of a talk show host, calling upon them for a voice prompt guarantees a stellar profile inclusion AND stellar piece of content.
With 4.1 million followers, Ben was the largest influencer we included in this campaign, with heaps of adoring viewers vying for attention in the comments. If reach and views are what you’re gunning for, Ben would be the ideal type of influencer – seeing that this video generated our most plays.
What do you get when you put two TV personalities together? Absolute magic on-screen, even on mobile.
You might recognise Josh and Cassidy from their season together on Love Island. And simply due to this backstory, this video practically sold itself. It’s tea!
Let’s not discount the quality of this video, which was dramatic, hilarious, and so unserious. But not nearly in a bad way. Instead, it was 100% on-brand with typical Aussie humour, hitting a home run with our intended audience: “This is so bloody good.”
It’s giving saved the best for last with this one.
Even the comments under all these Reels and TikToks matched our energy, and our campaign report included an overall sentiment analysis which proved (via hard evidence screenshots) how everything hit the mark.
“Redownloading Hinge rn” and “I think I need to reactivate my Hinge,” plus people tagging their own besties saying “We NEED to try this?”
It’s clear as day. Mission = Accomplished.
Some viewers even started playing cupid for the creators, with multiple “Why don’t you two date?” comments. But at the end of the day, it was all about the love and friendship on-screen, which made these videos so easy to watch (again, and again, and again).
Brands like Hinge have such a strong, identifiable identity.
They’re all about being inclusive, fun, progressive, genuine, and shaking up the dating game. Meaning when it came to levelling up their content, we needed some of Australia’s most beloved faces to rep them – creators you see and instantly recognise.
Hinge didn’t just need any content; they needed elite content.
The kind that gets people laughing, sharing, and (hopefully) connecting with a potential new romantic partner on our favourite app designed to be deleted.
Our creators were handpicked for their proven ability to bring the perfect mix of humour, authenticity, and relatability that 100% matches Hinge’s vibe, and this partnership also saw the creation of our most comprehensive report – but that’s a story for another day.
In our client’s words:
“I’m not going to downplay this. This is one of the most comprehensive and insightful wrap-up reports I’ve seen. I’m genuinely impressed by the level of detail and analysis. You really blew my mind and exceeded my expectations! I’m so happy to be working with you and proud to be your client.”
Period. So, you can think of us as the top matchmaker in Australia’s influencer space.
Ready to find your next romantic partner? Head to Hinge.
Ready to chat about your next influencer marketing campaign? Chat with us.
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