As online-dating apps court new and younger audiences, some of their marketing efforts are turning off daters instead.

Bumble last month apologised for ads making light of women so frustrated with online dating that they would consider celibacy. The League, a dating app targeting “the overly ambitious,” was called “ick-inducing” for its recent ad campaign, which included taglines like “Date someone with a 5-year-plan that makes you want to ovulate.” And Hinge’s years-long “Designed to Be Deleted” campaign has started to fall flat for longtime users still looking for love on their phones.

Online dating continues to play a lead role in the romantic lives of millions of Americans. Around half of all U.S. adults under 30 have used a dating site or app at some point in their lives, and one in 10 adults with partners say they met their significant other by dating online, according to Pew Research Center data. And the industry’s biggest players, Match Group and Bumble, now generate annual revenues north of $3.4 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively.

But the ad campaigns have high stakes for online dating companies trying to achieve the right mix of user acquisition and pricing power to re-interest Wall Street in a saturated sector.

Online-dating growth has been slowing. Paying users declined 6% in the first quarter of the year at Match Group, whose portfolio includes the League, Tinder and Hinge, compared with a 3% dip in the first quarter of 2023. The Bumble app grew paying users 18% in the first quarter, compared with 31% growth in the period a year earlier.

Shares in both have fallen this year even as the S&P 500 rose. And some singles have become perhaps as wary as investors.

Nearly half of all online daters and more than half of female daters say their experiences have been negative, according to Pew , and a growing tide of users are sharing their dissatisfaction in popular Facebook forums and on TikTok. People bemoan a perceived rise in bad dating etiquette such as “ghosting” and the sending of unsolicited sexual messages, and blame the way online romance makes it easier to discard potential partners at a touch of a button. “Hacks,” or tricks designed to game the apps for better dates, abound, demonstrating the shortcomings of their designs.

And the companies’ growing emphasis on pricier premium services is giving users new reasons to scrutinise the algorithmically driven path to romance.

Bumble made its name as a free app that only let women make the first move, for example. But since 2016, it has charged for advantages such as unlimited “swipes” to connect with prospects. The most expensive plan today costs $80 a month. Nonpaying users on Bumble and other apps can hit a limit, which some say leaves them taunted by the nagging fear that their perfect partners are hidden just on the other side of a paywall.

In this environment, new ad campaigns have become a release valve for the tension.

Failure to launch

Bumble users had hoped change was on the way after a teaser campaign depicted a discouraged dater joining a convent but happily leaving after being handed the Bumble app. “We’ve changed so you don’t have to,” one of the ads promised.

“At this point, it’s the app’s responsibility not to rebrand, but to pivot technologically,” said Michelle Khouri , the founder of creator platform Recordical , who has been using dating apps on and off for 10 years following her divorce from a man she met through online dating service eHarmony.

But Bumble’s big move wasn’t a fundamental overhaul: The company was letting women put questions on their profiles to which men they matched with could respond without a specific invitation.

Disappointment became backlash when the full ad campaign included billboards that declared, “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun” and “You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer.”

Female daters often thinly disguise their dissatisfaction with modern dating by joking about giving it up for a life of spinsterhood, and Bumble had done what all marketers try to do—joined the conversation . 

The problem for many was that Bumble’s quips about nunneries located the problem in daters’ resilience, as opposed to the dating apps themselves, and the unfavourable dating culture some users say the apps’ owners have been complicit in fuelling.

“Bumble was a brand that built its identity on empowering women and then they absolutely laughed in our faces,” said Michelle Wintersteen, the founder and chief executive of branding and marketing agency MKW Creative and a former Bumble user who grew frustrated by its paywalls.

Bumble took down the billboards and made several public apologies.

“We just made a mistake in how that landed. It was not good and we felt really terrible about it,” Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones said at a Wall Street Journal event last month.

Jones added in an emailed statement that the company is enhancing its internal and external review processes, and “actively engaging in conversations to ensure our marketing tone matches the 10 years Bumble has dedicated to championing women and creating safe, respectful, and empowering spaces for connection.”

Some online-dating executives and observers think the gripes with dating apps are largely an extension of age-old ennui over the search for lasting love.

“This is not a new phenomenon, and I think that dating apps have crystallised and brought those concerns to the fore, primarily because the prior institutions that were responsible for connecting individuals—such as family, friends, churches, other homes of worship—were not able to assume blame in the same way,” said Jess Carbino, a sociologist who has worked as a consultant for Bumble and Tinder.

Pickup lines

When the League introduced its “Be a GoalDigger” brand campaign in 2023, its first big marketing effort since being acquired by Match Group in 2022, some had visceral reactions.

“Whoever is behind this truly thought they were like, hitting Gen -Z, being super edgy and cool,” said the TikTok user who reported getting the “ick” from its campaign. “In reality, it is the most millennial, cringy thing that makes you want to actually convulse.”

The app has “never been afraid of speaking up or speaking out about the kind of people that The League attracts,” said Lisa Kraynak, senior vice president of marketing for the League, in a statement. In addition to its ad mentioning ovulation, others read: “Find Your Goal Mate” and “Date Someone With Big Goal Energy.”

“We know that we aren’t for everyone, and that is a core part of our value proposition,” Kraynak added, noting that a number of people responded well to it.

Unlike apps such as Tinder and Bumble, the League requires profile approval to join. On the app, users get three to five prospects a day unless they upgrade to become a paying member, which runs $99 a week or $399 for a three-month subscription. Once a match is made in the app, users have 14 days to initiate a conversation before the matches expire.

Fighting flakes

These components, as well as features such as a “flakiness score” indicating which users have a habit of matching but not chatting, are why Kraynak said the League is “designed to combat the dissatisfaction with apps today .”

Tinder has leaned away from the celebration of singledom that it embraced in a 2018 brand campaign that called single “a terrible thing to waste.” While the app has long been associated with hookups, the company has more recently emphasised the various relationships that can result from its app. Its marketing now romanticizes “a toothbrush at their place” and “comfortable silences,” all while it seeks to upsell users.

“It was about shedding a perception that was too narrow and not accurate,” said Melissa Hobley, chief marketing officer at Tinder.

Hinge, the Match Group brand that has long positioned itself as an app for finding relationships rather than hookups, continues to iterate on its “Designed to Be Deleted” campaign launched in 2019. The company has refreshed the campaign every year since then with the same tagline.

On social media, some dissatisfied users say they have deleted the app—not because they found love but because the app didn’t work for them. Hinge said every feature is designed to help daters be intentional and that it is looking for ways to address dating burnout.

Chief Marketing Officer Jackie Jantos said Hinge is the fastest-growing major dating app.

“‘Designed to Be Deleted,’ as an idea and a marketing program, continues to help us build our base of users,” Jantos said.

Match Group said Hinge’s direct revenue grew 50% in the first quarter of the year as paying members increased 31% and revenue per payer rose 14%. It offers two types of subscriptions, Hinge+ and HingeX, which start at $14.99 and $24.99, respectively, a week.

More recently, the company partnered with a social-media brand that interviews couples on the street, to circulate their love stories that involve Hinge.

“We know that our best growth comes from organic success stories of people meeting on Hinge,” added Jantos.

You could double your money in five minutes by buying a Birkin handbag at your local Hermès boutique and then flipping it. But getting your hands on the world’s most sought after purse is a lot more complicated than it sounds.

A basic black leather Birkin 25 costs $11,400 before tax at the Hermès store. Buyers can walk out and immediately give it to a handbag reseller like Privé Porter in exchange for $23,000 in cash. Privé Porter will then sell the Birkin on Instagram or at its Las Vegas pop-up store, possibly on the same day—box fresh, with receipt—for up to $32,000. All this for a bag that analysts estimate costs Hermès around $1,000 to make.

The unusual economics of the Birkin have upended the normal balance of power between shopper and store worker. At the Hermès boutique, it is the buyer who kowtows. Some of the wealthiest women in the world have brought homemade cookies to the store to cozy up to their sales assistant. They have offered tickets for Beyoncé concerts, trips to the Cannes Film Festival in a private jet and even envelopes stuffed with cash—all to get their hands on a Birkin.

Shoppers also spend tens of thousands of dollars on Hermès products they might not particularly want, such as an $87,500 canoe, to be in the running for a rare purse.

The Birkin turns 40 this year and is maturing into a phenomenon. To carry one is to signal that the wearer can afford to drop anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 on a handbag. It appeals to the limelight-seeking Kardashians, who own extensive collections, but also to European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde , who is often photographed on her way to meetings carrying a Birkin.

The purse anchors the Hermès founding family’s $150 billion fortune. But they aren’t the only ones getting rich: An army of unofficial flippers all over the world profit from reselling the purse.

The Birkin first hit shelves in 1984, a couple of years after the late actress Jane Birkin and Jean-Louis Dumas, then chief executive of Hermès, met on a flight to London. After complaining that she couldn’t find the right-size handbag, the two sketched out a design together—on a drink napkin or an Air France sick bag, depending on the retelling. In return for lending her name to the new product, Hermès paid Birkin an annual royalty.

The story about the bag’s creation is part of its appeal and one of the reasons why competitors have found it hard to replicate its success. “It’s a great narrative,” said David Dubois, associate professor of marketing at the business school Insead. Shoppers like the “serendipity of the meeting” and that a woman who was admired for her style had a direct hand in its design.

The purse didn’t take off right away. During the early 1990s, shoppers could walk into an Hermès boutique and buy one off the shelf. Birkins weren’t reselling for more than their original price tag back then.

But something shifted in the years after the 2008-09 financial crisis, according to Matthew Rubinger, now chief commercial officer at the online marketplace 1stDibs and one of the first people to recognise the Birkin’s resale potential. Rock-bottom interest rates meant more money was sloshing around, and it began to find its way into alternative assets.

It also became bad taste to wear a new “it bag” every season when the economy was on the ropes. This played to the strength of no-logo designs like the Birkin. Rubinger established the handbag departments of both Heritage Auctions and Christie’s and built them into multimillion-dollar businesses. When rare Himalaya Birkins began to set records at auction, people took notice.

“Once they started getting above $100,000, things got more serious,” he said.

Today, shoppers who want a Birkin at the Hermès store must jump through hoops. First, they need to establish a good rapport with one of the brand’s sales assistants. The next step is to spend serious cash on other goods, such as silk scarves, watches and shoes, to “qualify” for a bag, according to Birkin collectors.

When a shipment of Birkins arrives at an Hermès store from France, the leather-goods manager assigns the purses to individual sales assistants, all of whom have a list of wealthy clients waiting to be offered a bag. The sales assistant must make a case for which individual on that list deserves to be offered a Birkin and get the manager’s approval.

This has created a perception among Hermès shoppers that the biggest spenders get access to Birkins first. Hermès is being sued in a California court by two wounded shoppers who allege that the brand only sells Birkins to “worthy” customers and makes purchases of the bag conditional on buying other items at the store. Hermès said in a recent court filing that it doesn’t require customers to buy other products before getting one of the coveted bags.

Just how much do shoppers need to drop to be offered a bag? Birkin collectors say that there is no hard rule but that most people can expect to shell out $10,000 or more on Hermès scarves, shoes and clothes before they will be offered a basic Birkin. To get a rare bag like the Himalaya Birkin, they might need to spend $200,000 or more.

This is known as the Hermès “prespend” or the “spend ratio” in Birkin-collecting circles. Hermès never spells this out explicitly, nor has it ever used these terms. But Birkin hopefuls say they have been told by their sales assistants that they need to visit the store more often. Resellers say that Hermès sales assistants don’t make commissions on Birkins, but that they can leverage hunger for the bag to sell other products for which they are rewarded.

Even after spending tens of thousands of dollars, Birkin hunters might not be offered the size or colour bag they want. This creates a golden opportunity for resellers.

Say a woman who shops regularly with the brand wants a red Birkin but is offered green. Rather than appearing ungrateful—because it is important to keep the sales assistant on her side in the Birkin-hunting game—she will buy the bag, knowing it can be sold to a reseller for a profit and hope to get the red later.

Hermès knows its top clients are flipping the bags. Read the fine print on a Birkin receipt, and the company asks that its customers will not, “directly or indirectly, resell Hermès products purchased in our boutiques for commercial purposes.” No Hermès shopper was willing to go on the record for this article about the experience of flipping the bags to a reseller, out of concern over being blacklisted by the brand.

The resale market has become a kind of “buy-now button” for Birkins, said Michelle Berk, founder of Privé Porter. Some shoppers are willing to pay a big premium to get their hands on a Birkin immediately, in the exact color they want. They might not have the patience for the steps needed to secure one of the bags at the Hermès store.

In the past, resellers recruited flight attendants or polished overseas students to buy Birkin bags in Hermès stores all over the world in return for a fee. Now, the flippers get most of their supply from Hermès’s VIP customers. They also get Birkins by trading with their peers on WhatsApp. If clients are looking for a size or colour that one seller doesn’t have in stock, they can put out a call on the resellers’ group chat to see if anyone has that model.

One way Birkin hunters can accelerate an in-store purchase is by splashing out on the brand’s furniture or fine jewellery, said Judy Taylor, founder of Madison Avenue Couture and a handbag reseller for 15 years.

They can pick up an $8,000 paper basket for the home office, a $70,000 gold bracelet or a $140,000 sofa. Taylor said Hermès’s sales in categories like fine jewellery or watches, where the brand isn’t known for its expertise, are at least partially driven by Birkin hunters.

“No offence to Hermès, but if you can buy a necklace from Van Cleef for the same price as Hermès, you’ll likely go to Van Cleef,” she said.

Really big spenders are offered bespoke goods. Hermès does a sideline in special-order skis, skateboards and fishing gear for superwealthy clients and can customise the interior of a yacht or chopper. Privé Porter’s Berk received a message from a customer who was offered an $87,500 canoe. These buyers get access to the rarest Birkins.

An unusually large amount of new Hermès inventory ends up for sale in the secondhand market—another sign that Birkin mania might be driving sales of products that customers don’t really want. Of all the nonhandbag Hermès items on The RealReal , 35% are in pristine condition, according to data supplied by the luxury resale website. The average for other designers on The RealReal, including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Bottega Veneta and Saint Laurent, is 20%.

The Birkin’s popularity is very flattering for Hermès and might also help the company to keep its marketing budget low. It doesn’t need to promote itself when celebrities can be relied upon to freely splash photos of their bags on social media. In 2023, Hermès reinvested 4% of its sales back into promotions, compared with 12% at crosstown rival LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

But the circus does cause problems for Hermès. Last year, the company had to fire staff at its Miami Design District store after some customers got more than their official allocation of Birkins, according to sources. Collectors say Hermès only allows two bags a year per individual, but employees might have been helping shoppers to get around this.

Shoppers and resellers have tried to bribe their way to Birkins. Hermès has strict rules about what customers can and can’t give sales assistants as gifts. Well-behaved Birkin hunters give goods that can be handed over openly at the store and shared among employees—hence the home-baked cookies. Trays of baklava are another go-to.

Hermès doesn’t like the flipping, but stamping out the resellers would harm the brand’s own interests. The company raised prices of its exotic-skin Birkins by around 20% in January. Resellers think the move was aimed at squeezing profits in the secondhand market, but it hasn’t worked. Dealers passed on the increase to their customers without a hitch.

Hermès could increase production and flood the market with new bags. This would end the financial incentive to resell Birkins, but it would also destroy their mystique.

Why are women— and increasingly men , too—so hungry for the Birkin? One justification for spending huge sums on a handbag is that the Birkin is a good investment. Except, it isn’t really. Any profit on reselling a bag purchased in store will be lower after factoring in the thousands of dollars spent on other goods to qualify.

A bag sourced from a reseller or on the block at Christie’s has limited upside because a hefty markup is factored into the price. A Birkin bought at auction in 2010 would sell for around 50% more today, according to Art Market Research data. Contemporary art, watches and classic cars have all performed better. Hermès’s own stock has been a much smarter investment than the Birkin, rising more than 20-fold since 2010.

Shoppers seem to lust after the Birkin because it is rare, expensive and well made. There is no better status symbol for those who want to display their wealth. And the hunt involved in getting one might be the whole point. Wealthy shoppers tolerate waiting at the Hermès store in a way that wouldn’t be acceptable in other areas of their lives.

Even how a person treats the Birkin has turned into a kind of code. Some collectors store them in glass display cabinets, hardly ever using them. This preserves their resale value.

But the supermodel Irina Shayk was photographed last year carrying her dog in a black crocodile Birkin. According to Sasha Skoda, The RealReal’s vice president of merchandising, the subtext to the “messy Birkin” trend is that you have to be seriously rich to treat a $40,000 handbag this casually. Jane Birkin was also hard on her bags, covering them with political stickers and tying charms around the handles. One of her weathered black Birkins sold at auction for £119,000 in 2021, around $150,000 at current exchange rates.

Rival luxury brands are trying to come up with challengers. Louis Vuitton recently launched a $1 million handbag. Chanel has almost doubled the price of its classic flap purse in four years to make it more exclusive.

For now, though, the reign of the Birkin looks secure. If you want to own one, better dig deep at the Hermès store.

—Herme`s Birkin bag provided by The RealReal.