Bumble is removing celibacy billboards after backlash

Editors note: This story has been updated with an apology Bumble issued on Instagram on Monday evening.

Dating app Bumble is pulling outdoor ads that declared “a vow of celibacy is not the answer,” after the message sparked a social media backlash.

Also read: Feeld adds “Celibacy” option to its dating app

The message is part of a broader rebranding campaign that debuted in late April and was designed to appeal to women who are tired of the dating game. Backlash is coming from the very women Bumble is seeking to appeal to, with some critics complaining the ad is at odds with those who see celibacy as a particularly valid personal choice in the face of abortion rights being restricted in the U.S.

Read more about Bumble’s rebrand here

“Celibacy is absolutely the answer when our rights are taken away from us,” Instagram user @thatbrunetteeee commented on a recent Bumble post. The comment received more than 700 likes.

A TikTok from user Sara McCord that referred to the message as “a miss” has received more than 22,000 likes as of this writing.

The billboard’s copy, McCord says in the TikTok, “harkens back to a lot of messaging that has been used to force women to have sex over the years.”

A Bumble spokesperson in an email to Ad Age on Monday said the line would be removed from the campaign. “Women’s experiences are at the center of what we do at Bumble. As part of our recent marketing campaign we included an ad with language around celibacy as a response to the frustrations of dating,” the spokesperson wrote.

“We have heard the concerns shared about the ad’s language and understand that rather than highlighting a current sentiment towards dating, it may have had a negative impact on some of our community. This was not our intention and we are in the process of removing it from our marketing campaign, and will continue to listen to the feedback from our members,” the spokesperson said.

On Monday evening, Bumble issued an apology on Instagram, while pledging to make donations to organizations including the National Domestic Violence Hotline. It added that it would offer billboard space to these organizations that it had used for the celibacy message, "for the remainder of our reserved billboard time."

Bumble was originally a hit with women in part because the app empowered women, rather than men, to make the first move.

Bumble’s rebrand brand includes aesthetic changes and new app features and was supported by an ad campaign that includes a video showing a woman who is so tired of dating that she joins some sort of women-only convent. She leaves, perhaps to return to the world of men, when she sees the app’s refresh. The campaign, which was created in-house, included out-of-home placements in more than 10 countries. Bumble did not confirm where the celibacy-specific billboards are located, but there appear to be at least two separate ones based on images shared on social media.

“When it comes to backlash towards an OOH campaign you can’t simply delete the creative,” said Brian Rappaport, founder of out-of-home agency Quan Media Group. There are two things a brand can do instead: The first would be to address said creative via a statement on social media or elsewhere, he noted. (He was interviewed before Bumble issued its Instagram apology.)

“It may not make the public sentiment any better, but you can clarify the point of the campaign and what you were trying to accomplish,” Rappaport said. The second would be to do a creative refresh for the brand’s low-cost placements. “OOH production isn’t that pricey,” aside from painted walls or subway station takeovers, he added. “You can swap out assets rather quickly if the backlash is that bad.”

Based on the number of users threatening to delete their accounts and use other dating apps such as Hinge instead, there’s an argument to be made that Bumble’s mistake is, in fact, “that bad.”

“Bumble launched as an app and originally was about empowering women to make the first move and have control. A billboard like this says the opposite,” said Christen Nino De Guzman, an influencer marketing expert and content creator who has done sponsored posts with Google, online dating company Match.com (whose parent company, Match Group, owns many of Bumble’s competitors, including Tinder), Neutrogena and more.

“It’s so tone-deaf to put out an ad like this in a time when women are losing reproductive rights in certain parts of the country. Not to mention the countless safety issues women face on dating apps,” she said.

“Bumble needs to respect a woman’s right to choose. Whether a woman has a vow of celibacy due to religious reasons or chooses to abstain from sex for her own personal reasons—that’s her choice and as an app that claims to empower women, they need to understand that an ad like this is ignorant,” Nino De Guzman said.

See more reactions to Bumble’s campaign below: