The conceit of the romantic near miss — the idea that you once stood next to your future beloved in a coffee line, or walked past them on a Tuesday in 2019 — has been a staple of love stories since before anyone swiped anything. Hinge, the dating application owned by Match Group, is now betting that this particular flavor of fate still plays well with the generation that supposedly invented cynicism about dating apps.
A campaign titled "Can't Believe We Met on Hinge," created by the agency Birthday and directed by India Sleem, features seven real couples from the United States, Britain, and Australia who, the spots reveal, nearly encountered each other before their phones finally made the introduction. One pair lived on the same New York City block. Another crossed paths at a London party, though only one of them remembers. A third involves a man who visited a gallery on the precise day its employee — his future partner — happened to be elsewhere.
The films take the form of intimate interviews, with the couples speaking directly to camera about the repetitive disappointments that preceded their eventual meeting. Ms. Sleem, the director, is said to have embedded the couples' voices throughout the production process, a phrase that suggests either genuine collaborative filmmaking or a particularly thorough release form.
(The irony that an app designed to eliminate chance is now celebrating chance is left, perhaps wisely, unexamined.)
The campaign will run across streaming, cinema, and social media in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia through July. Jackie Young, who joined Hinge in 2023 as senior vice president of global communications after a stint at Netflix, oversaw the effort.
Whether Gen Z finds the near-miss narrative charming or simply another way to monetize their ambivalence about online dating remains, as always, a matter for the comments section.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Hinge Celebrates the Near Misses Behind Every Gen Z Love Story"