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29 September 2023
Author: The Future Laboratory
Image: SHIFT sofa, Form Us With Love
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Tinder, US
Global – Unveiled in September 2023, Tinder Select is the platform's new high-end subscription plan offered to its most active users for £410 ($499, €475) per month.
This exclusive tier offers premium features like VIP search, matching and conversation, although specific details have yet to be disclosed. The company stated that this offering is currently accessible to fewer than 1% of Tinder’s most active users.
While Tinder Select represents a significant price increase compared to its other subscription options, which start at £20.60 ($24.99, €23.75) per month, the dating app aims to cater for highly engaged and active users seeking more effective ways to connect. Tinder’s current top 10% of users by time on the app contributed an average of 53% of total time spent on the platform this year, according to research firm Apptopia.
Match Group, Tinder’s parent company, has previously ventured into high-priced subscription models with the acquisition of The League, a dating app with a weekly fee of up to £823 ($1,000, €950). Although Match Group expects Tinder Select to attract a limited number of new subscribers, it anticipates a considerable impact on revenue.
As explored in Video Dating Futures, dating apps must evolve to remain relevant in an oversaturated market. For Tinder, attracting new users remains a challenge, and it will get more complex as even Roblox aims to become a platform for dating.
Middle East – Publicis Middle East and Pizza Hut have collaborated on the restaurant giant’s first venture into the metaverse.
Inspired by fans creating their own pizza-themed experiences on the app, The Hut is a virtual Pizza Hut world on Roblox. Fans can play mini-games and hunt for their favourite pizza toppings and earn badges and prizes, all while kitting out their Roblox avatars in pizza-themed costumes and accessories, such as cheese and tomato onesies, tomato helmets and pepperoni glasses.
The new Roblox world is accompanied by a Fun 4 All family pizza and sides deal from Pizza Hut.
‘With the launch of The Hut into Roblox, we want to honour the efforts of our superfans and deliver what they have been hoping for, giving them a chance to virtually experience the Pizza Hut world and share their love for pizza,’ Ahmed Sabri, marketing lead at Pizza Hut Middle East and Pakistan, told Campaign.
Pizza Hut’s new campaign follows in the footsteps of other retailers such as Chipotle, Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s that have entered into the Gastro Gaming Market in an attempt to appeal to families and young gaming communities.
TMNT: Mutant Mayhem Pizza-Scented Controller by Xbox, US
Selfridges and Yell, UK
UK – Almost five years after the last issue of the Yellow Pages was sent to print, Yell is creating an Eau de Yellow Pages perfume.
With top notes of bergamot and a hint of lemon, followed by cedar, musk and notes of sweet vanilla, the fragrance is intended to evoke memories of leafing through the heavy business catalogue. A limited run of the perfume is set to be released later this year.
‘The books are no longer a mainstay of our lives, but the Yellow Pages had an unmistakable smell that still conjures up cherished memories,’ Yell’s head of public relations, Sarah O’Rafferty, told Metro.
Yell has also recently collaborated with Selfridges on a limited three-month run of the Yellow Pages Directory of Now. Available online and in Selfridges stores, the 72-page publication has been reworked into a guide to the current cultural zeitgeist, while retaining the famed Yellow Pages aesthetic.
The current speed of the trend cycle has shortened perceptions of what is ‘vintage’ or ‘nostalgic’ drastically, leading to many fashion brands building archives. By embracing this archival model and reworking previous concepts to continue the brand’s legacy, Yell becomes a perfect example of a resilient Elastic Brand.
As our offices become more social, intimate and personal, our homes are becoming more collaborative, corporate, commercial and hybrid.
But our living spaces are also becoming the real battleground for brands – with consumers demanding new kinds of intimacy, service and regenerative practices, and brands delivering these through transformative experience and superlative service.
Our Home States Futures macrotrend will highlight a new approach to viewing the home as an active and concentrated retail and lifestyle eco-system. It will become a hub that brands must target, woo and win over in precise and interconnected ways. To conquer this home-centric market, brands may appoint chief household officers and businesses will need to coordinate conversations, find synergies and create clear cross-selling strategies.
Join our in-house team, invited experts and global panellists at our Home States Futures online event on 19 October 2023 from 4:30pm to 5:30pm BST as we examine the future home – in terms of how we broker time, maximise wellbeing, re-assess usage, reduce waste, embrace data and develop new ways to side-hustle revenues from our sitting rooms.
Ketut Subiyanto
