If you don’t know what tinder is, you might relate to one of the characters in the new Tinder advertisement for the Indian audience. Firstly, take a look at the ad before continuing reading this post:
Tinder’s India Ad
For all you lazy people who won’t bother watching the ad, let me give you a summary of it.
It starts off with a lady in her early 20s fiddling with a scarf and supposedly getting ready to go out. Her mom walks in and gazes with amusement, sensing that she’s dressing up for something special. A conversation follows which consists of the usual India routine of “Are you going out with someone?”, “When will you be home?” etc. Obviously, the mother is not convinced with the answers and decides to take a glimpse at her daughter’s Tinder notification that pops up on her phone, realizing that she’s going to meet “someone”.
However, things take a turn as her mother encouragingly says to her that she would “right swipe” her daughter’s choice – basically approving her of going out to meet a stranger in a romantic and maybe sexual way.
Out of the countless, fascinating possibilities and implications of this ad, let us streamline to two.
- India is finally progressing towards being a more liberal country where a platform such as Tinder, which is basically a wingman for casual dating and hook-ups, is being accepted (?)
- Aunty does not know what Tinder is about and might be confusing it with Bharat Matrimonial.
Whichever of the two holds true, we must agree that Tinder’s attempt to woo the Indian audience is an interesting one, to say the least. It definitely has stirred mix reactions from everyone and has been pretty talked about. There’s a successful ad. Congratulations Tinder.
Whether they have been able to skew the image of Tinder in India or not is a question too early to answer but the ad has surely revved up a discussion on it. Maybe Tinder wants a more distinct image in India; involving the mothers and daughters and coming off as more of an acceptable platform for unfamiliar, romantic, meetings (or as we call it dating). Who knows?
All said and done, we applaud Tinder for the creative, thoughtful and sanskari appeal to India mothers.
