Dating app Bumble opens a “safe space” restaurant

The Innovation team at Instinctif harness the best of the future to deliver market-leading ideas in the present. The team’s specialism spans digital strategy and marketing, data & analytics, and strategic brand. With the world and news agenda fast-changing around us, now’s the time to get agile in how we think and work.

This newsletter brings you the best of the week in the ‘new normal’, straight from the desk of the Innovation team.

Pandemic dating has brought with it new priorities.

Where the main preoccupation for love-seeking hopefuls used to be of a ‘spinach-in-your teeth’ bent, dating app Bumble is now taking a punt on daters being more concerned with finding a safe space to meet.

After months spent sequestered at home, it can be difficult to know where and how it’s appropriate to reconvene. In response to this, Bumble, the dating app that puts women in the driving seat by requiring that they send the first message, is launching a bricks and mortar store in New York City.

According to Bumble’s head of brand partnerships, the Bumble Brew café has been designed as a “safe space for healthy and equitable relationships and connections,”

The site was first conceived of in the innocent days of 2019, where the mission was to deliver a ‘date friendly’ site, offering no ‘awkward’ foods (think garlic, spaghetti or stain-leaving sauces). Now, Bumble recognises that we all have bigger figurative fish to fry, adding messy food back onto the menu.

It remains to be seen what the “safe space” will look like; we’ll learn more when the site opens on 24 July.

Norway has just made a bold move: they’ve made it illegal for influencers to silently share retouched photos of their body in promotional posts on social media.

In amendments to the country’s 2009 Marketing Act, influencers must now acknowledge when their images have been edited. The amendments “aim to help reduce body pressure in society due to idealised people in advertising.”

So, if an influencer shares promotional content where alterations have been made to their body shape, size, and skin, they must ensure the content is marked with labels indicating the edits made; from ‘enlarged lips’ to ‘cinched waist’ and ‘enhanced muscle tone’.

The changes have received widespread support from the Norwegian influencer community, and have also sparked debate about whether the law should also cover non-sponsored content.

This week’s tip comes from Eoin McGrath, Junior Account Manager.

This month, travel restrictions are starting to ease across Europe, and countries are preparing to welcome back visitors. As we look at the new landscape, it is clear that budget airlines have suffered and there are (even more so) increasing concerns about climate change. A study by Cardiff University found that 47% of holidaymakers in the UK plan to fly less after the pandemic.

Considering the awareness around aviation emissions, Europe’s sleeper services are being revived. Nightjet, the Austrian rail operator, and Snälltåget from Sweden are among those relaunching overnight services between EU cities. Not only this but startups, such as European Sleeper, has even raised £340,000 to launch a sleep service between Brussels and Prague. This rise in this trend is not surprising as you may think, as before the pandemic aviation was one the of globe’s fastest-growing sources of CO2.

Cat Jones, the founder of the no-fly travel agency Byway, wants to incorporate more night trains into the firm’s vision and believes in them for the future:

“It’s really exciting because it feels like now is the moment for slow travel. Now is the time where people stop thinking of trains as a substitute for planes and start thinking of them as a way of holidaying and travelling differently.”

Would you join in on this new golden era of rail travel?