To authentically increase brand awareness and build brand consideration among its predominantly Gen Z member base, Tinder needed a way to creatively engage its target audience that illustrated the brand’s understanding of their cultural preferences and methods of media consumption.

Coupling their growing affinity for 90’s nostalgia with the celebrity of TikTok’s biggest stars, Tinder tested Gen Z's responsiveness to the brand by producing a “Beverly Hills 90210” parody. Starring Noah Beck, Tayler Holder, Markell Washington, Kellianne Stankus, SJ Bleau and Gabby Murray, this new Gen Z take on the 90’s cult classic, “90069,” gave fans the opportunity to see a new side of their favorite TikTok creators.

Tinder's goals included the following:

Increase positive social sentiment + brand love

Grow their Gen Z audience by producing content by Gen Z, for Gen Z

Drive organic growth on YouTube (Targeting +3K monthly audience growth and 50K average views)

After the parody received an overwhelmingly positive response and resulted in 740K+ views across platforms, fans clamored for more. This presented an opportunity for Tinder to continue this conversation with their growing Gen Z community by partnering with these same TikTok creators to bring the story to life as a series aimed at increasing brand love among 18-24 year olds.

Over the course of five produced episodes, the series showcased various forms of connection that can be found on Tinder and incorporated member-sourced elements to the storyline to provide an opportunity for fan involvement while driving viewership and social buzz on Tinder’s owned channels.

With 90% of Wattpad users being young millenials and Gen Z, Tinder saw this as an opportunity to take Gen Z's love of fan fiction and turn it into a branded series with 90069. Tinder incorporated a member-sourced element to the series to drive further fan investment by having the stars of the show put out posts asking for follower submissions to help develop the fan fiction story. Various elements of their submissions were incorporated throughout the storyline.

The TikTok stars that Tinder utilized for the series were part of a long-term ambassador program. Throughout the partnership, many of the ambassadors entered into relationships. Scripting a fictional show allowed Tinder to partner with their ambassadors in an organic way while respecting their relationships and creating an opportunity to tap into a new side of these creators - as actors in starring roles for the series.

Though all of the creators had a passion and talent for acting, most of them had never acted professionally before. The series gave them the opportunity to take their careers to show off their acting chops while giving fans exclusive content featuring their favorite TikTok stars that doubled as fresh entertainment. To also make the cast feel more comfortable on camera, our director had 1:1 calls with the actors, we did a table read before shooting, our script writer was on set to help coach the cast through each scene. They all easily rose to the occasion in the process and this series then gave them the opportunity to take their careers to the next level.

Resulting in continued growth across core social channels and a total of 697.6M views on TikTok alone, the insights and learnings from the “90069” fan fiction series allowed Tinder to evolve the brand’s approach to content creation altogether.

The premiere episode of the series is currently the 3rd most popular video of all time on Tinder’s YouTube channel - garnering over 3.5M views. The entire series also drew in over 6M views on YouTube and drove an average of +9K monthly audience growth on the platform.

The results helped increase brand relevance among Gen Z, with fans of the featured influencers flocking to Tinder's social channels for teasers and behind the scenes content in addition to watching each of the episodes.

The series' results not only exceeded Tinder’s benchmarks in followers, impressions, views and engagements. Also, after measuring the qualitative data through the comments around user sentiment, the brand found