Marketing

Image: Stir

Actress Busy Phillips is starring in her latest project – a new holiday promotion for dating app Stir, which caters to single parents.

The campaign MILF on the SHILF campaign satirizes the popular Christmas tradition in many households with kids of “Elf on a Shelf,” but now with an adult twist. The goal is to help single parents have a little fun this holiday season and embrace their inner MILF or DILF (Mother or Father I’d like Fireside, according to the campaign).

The campaign features a video of Phillips in elf attire posing on a mantel, luxuriating in costume in a bath, and advocating for parents to take care of themselves this holiday season – instead of focusing all their attention on making sure the kids have a great holiday.

Image: Bumble

Bumble For Friends, the signature dating app’s standalone app that focuses on helping people find friends, has debuted new AI-based features.

The app announced one new feature dubbed “Plans” which helps users organize a meet-up in real life, and lets them invite up to 15 people. They can create public or private plans from the app, according to Tech Crunch, but the private plans require the planner to send invitations to specific members in their network.

The feature resembles the MeetUp app, where you can organize an event and invite members of your group to attend. Bumble offers options to grab coffee, eat out, do a workout together, “something outdoors” or a night out. Then you can make it public or private, and the last step is choosing the friends from your Bumble network to invite.

Dating app giants Bumble and Match Group have pulled their ads from Instagram after The Wall Street Journal reported that they were appearing next to inappropriate and explicit content.

According to The Times of India, the Wall Street Journal found that the ads of several major brands were being served next to explicit and sexualized content on the social media app, including those of Disney and Walmart.

The Journal set up Instagram test accounts alongside The Canadian Centre for Child Protection which followed young gymnasts, cheerleaders and influencers. When its investigative team looked through Reels on these test accounts, they discovered that Instagram “served jarring doses of salacious content.”

Blued, China’s most popular gay dating app, plans to expand in Southeast Asia and in the U.S. while the Chinese government clamps down on LGBTQIA content.

According to Rest of World, Blued’s new parent company New Town wants to make the platform “the world’s largest social network for the LGBTQIA community,” and part of its strategy is to encourage user participation and community interaction, especially outside of China.

New Town’s CEO Li Ping sees enormous potential in the LGBTQIA market, and intends to grow the platform by targeting markets in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and North America. “The growth of the LGBTQ population in Southeast Asia and North America is particularly evident,” a spokesperson told Rest of World.

Image: bumble

Bumble for Friends, the new standalone app for finding friends from dating app Bumble, has partnered with holiday turkey brand Butterball to bring people together this holiday season.

The new partnership initiative called “Find Your Table” features a series of Friendsgiving events and some resources to help people make new connections ahead of the holiday season. The purpose, according to the joint press release, is to “help people make new connections and discover the joy and ease of gathering with friends and family, over turkey, this holiday season.”

The in-person event launches Thursday, November 2nd at 6:00pm EST in New York City, and will feature friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson, No More Lonely Friends founder Marissa Meizz and Dinner with Friends Founder Anita Michaud, along with reps from Butterball, according to the release. They will conduct holiday tastings as well as help to connect people.

Image: BLK

BLK dating app, a popular app for Black singles, has debuted a new animated series called Halloween Horror Stories, featuring real-life dating horror stories from users of the platform.

The new series consists of three animated shorts chronicling the dating horrors of Black singles, according to Cassius Life.

For example, one story entitled “Stolen Hearts & Wheels” features a BLK user getting picked up for a first date in a stolen car. The video is a short, only a minute long, and takes the audience through the man getting picked up by his date as she shows off how fast the car can go. There are some hints that it might not be her car – like the retirement tips book he sees in the passenger seat.