Tinder-HaikuJAM for Love: A successful digital campaign

“I wrote my first line

It tweaked at me in the second

With third I was a poet”

Love and poetry vein out from the same source- our heart and they cannot be anything but pure. International Haiku Poetry Day (17th April 2016), brought together the love for poetry and love per say in the form of a collaboration between dating app Tinder and HaikuJAM, the collaborative poetry writing app based in London to crowdsource haiku poems about the magic of human connections. They called the campaign "#SwipeRight" and it did work just right.  

There was a time when "dating apps" were not considered "cool" enough. In today's day and age, it is the perfect place to find likeminded people and friends for life. Perhaps, what better way then merging the idea with a poetry. After all, it has been the tried and tested path for lovers for ages now.

As we all know, Haiku as an ancient form of Japanese poetry traditionally consists of three lines. Users of HaikuJAM can collaborate with people from all over the world to create their own little pieces of emotion evoking literature- one line at a time. So, three people come together to write one haiku and the journey is full of surprises and creative anticipation. People can also substitute words with images to create ‘Photo-Stories’.  

The two-day campaign that commenced on 16th April resulted in some mesmerizing poetry globally, and in India. There was a global outreach of 8.6 million people and 9 million impressions. A total of 8,279 entries including lines or photos were submitted along with 2,591 formally completed haikus.

It is not surprising that once again, a well thought after "content" platform has managed to grab eyeballs. Content has been and will always be the way to strike the right chord with the end customers. HaikuJam and Tinder definitely managed to tug the right strings in their audience's heart.

On submission, each poem was also entered into a contest, with the winners getting a selection of Tinder merchandise. In addition, Tinder and HaikuJAM will be publishing the best entries in a forthcoming Haiku poetry book.

TINDER AND HAIKU? WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE https://t.co/FwdqoOpsmF

— Arisha Rozaidee (@ArishaRozaidee) April 18, 2016

It was a global campaign that saw participation from US, UK, Netherlands, Malaysia, India and many more countries. Most of the micro poems were tiny love tales with love, eyes, heart, life, time as the most commonly used words. “The most popular themes were Someone New, When We Met, First Dates, and Moments, while the most popular words were Love, Eyes, Heart, Life, Time,” shared HaikuJAM’s 24-year  old CEO, Dhrupad Karwa.

@HaikuJAM #InternationalHaikuDay pic.twitter.com/TR7A95znOx

— Leela (@leela_avatar) April 15, 2016

“Poetry is the language of love and this partnership was a great opportunity for us to bring together haiku lovers to express themselves in their own unique style,” said Taru Kapoor, head of Tinder India in a press statement.

Some of the heartfelt entries include:

Next time, she is upset with you, try writing haikus for her or in this case, collaborate with a few and write one in her praise. Who know's it might as well work wonders, just like these.