Justin Ryan’s Post

What We're Talking About on Whatsapp: 🌟 Rising: teen and tween demand for premium skincare treatments, including Drunk Elephant, Christian Dior and Sol de Janeiro. Also rising: young patients with skin irritation and breakouts caused by using too many products. The brands caught in the middle will need to carefully navigate associated ethical and legal issues. https://lnkd.in/grfUq5w7 🌟 Google is considering charging for new ‘premium’ features powered by generative artificial intelligence. The proposed revamp to its cash cow search engine would mark the first time the company has paywalled its core product. https://lnkd.in/dg-FzJjA 🌟 Almost one in three jobs created over the past year was in an industry servicing the National Disability Insurance Scheme, highlighting the scale of the challenge to reign in the program. https://lnkd.in/gJp7vrra. 🌟 Temu, the e-commerce app that sells bargain-bin delights, is the No. 1 advertiser by revenue on Meta, spending a staggering US$2B last year on Facebook and Instagram ads. Temu is also investing in paid search for its items to appear alongside name-brand products. Both practices increase advertising costs for competitor brands. https://lnkd.in/gtd3XWt5 🌟 Blundstones, the 154-year-old Tasmanian-origin work boot, continue to grow overseas. Interestingly, while only 15 per cent of Australian sales fall into the lifestyle category, the boots are a fashion item in the UK and US, worn by David Beckham, Kate Moss and Kate Middleton. https://lnkd.in/gZGsdu4t 🌟 Invest Like the Best is one of our favourite podcasts, and we enjoyed Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s interview with Sean Feeney, the owner of top NYC restaurants Lila and Misi. Sean, an ex-trader, leveraged his finance background to build profitable restaurants – for example, looking at 40 potential sites to find one with the right rent to sales ratio (of 8%). https://lnkd.in/dkVBatH8

"Household chores" are a top priority for 94% of people on dating apps, according to @WhirlpoolUSA. So, they encouraged bachelors update their dating profiles, swapping gym photos for laundry photos instead. Creative. Strategic. Effective. I love the simplicity. Read: https://lnkd.in/eE2-pkxz via Marketing Dive #CreativeStrategy #CreativeMarketing

From Zero to a $7M App Empire: How Blake Anderson Turned Determination Into Digital Success 📱 In 2023, Blake Anderson found himself in a challenging situation—broke, with no clear path forward. But instead of giving in to despair, Blake made a life-changing decision: he would build a mobile app empire, despite having no prior experience in coding and zero funding to back him up. Blake’s first breakthrough came in the form of PlugAI, an innovative AI-driven dating coach app. The idea sparked when Blake’s college roommate frequently asked him for help with conversations on dating apps. Blake wondered, "Could ChatGPT handle this?" The answer was a resounding yes. With the idea in mind, Blake designed the app using Figma and turned to ChatGPT to help him write the code. The app was an instant hit. Plug AI reached 1.5 million downloads within just four months and started generating an impressive $190K per month in revenue. Remarkably, Blake achieved this by spending only $100 on advertising—placing ads on two faceless YouTube channels, which resulted in 200K downloads within a week! But Blake wasn’t content with just one success story. Next, he ventured into the rapidly growing "look-maxing" trend—an obsession with improving one's appearance. This led to the creation of Umax, a look-maxing app that has already made over $3M this year alone. Blake’s approach was simple yet powerful: he partnered with Sam Zia, a well-known influencer in the look-maxing community, and launched Umax within a month. The app’s launch video garnered hundreds of thousands of views, and Umax quickly scaled to $500K in MRR! Driven by his successes, Blake expanded his operations by collaborating with two young entrepreneurs, Zach and Henry. Together, they launched Cal AI, another major hit, which crossed $3M in ARR shortly after its May launch. The formula remained consistent—Blake leveraged partnerships with underrated creators and optimized their content for viral distribution, followed by strategic ad placements. Blake’s journey is a remarkable example of how identifying trends, shipping products quickly, and mastering distribution can lead to extraordinary success. His approach is straightforward: find an emerging niche, build a simple but effective MVP using tools like ChatGPT, and then partner with the right influencers to scale. But Blake isn’t stopping here. His next venture, Apex, aims to revolutionize the self-improvement industry by delivering content and free apps that focus on real, meaningful growth. He believes that most subscription apps miss the mark and he intends to set a new standard in the industry. Blake's story is one of relentless focus, ingenuity, and the power of self-education. His journey is a testament to what can be achieved when you combine vision with action. #StartupSuccess #Entrepreneurship #AppDevelopment #AIInnovation #GrowthHacking #Bootstrapping #DigitalTransformation #SelfImprovement #PlugAI #Umax

I joined a Dating App company as Marketing manager #ASO in 2022ish... and in the first weeks months , I learned - They were trying to lower the rankings of other apps by posting bad reviews (you read that right). - a healthy amount of budget was on keyword boost downloads - the biggest priority was to buy enough good/fake reviews to cover the bad REAL reviews. Other dodgy ideas they had was.... - Buying good fake reviews for competitors and then reporting them to Apple and Google. - Having a team of outsourcers sending messages to men to engage in conversation. - Sending a fake "hello" from real women users to male users, and once the message was sent, deleting it from the female users' inboxes to get male users to buy premium access to "engage with female users" - Faking the number of local "people in your area" to try to get people to sign up. When I left, I tried to contact Hinge Tinder , Bumble Inc. ..nobody listened. It seems I'm now a whistleblower... and to be honest, not only is the App Store a rigged game, but Apple and Google barely care. The dating industry is a disgusting pit (not very different from the app industry). What I find amazing is how common those strategies are. Companies still buy reviews, still pay for keyword downloads, trick their users... and in many cases, some of those "app marketing companies" that promote those strategies are the agencies and "app marketing gurus" you see at those "app conferences" where everyone smiles, pretending the rotten smell around the room doesn't exist. 😘

Marketing💡 There are a couple of popular dating apps for the sober daters: THC beverage brands should consider advertising on these apps: https://lnkd.in/eRdmGTAt #marketing tip

Is TikTok Driving Real-World Behavior Change? The Pineapple Phenomenon and Beyond. Happy 'Hump Day' aka Wednesday. Time for a little lightheartedness. Let's dive into a fascinating trend that's been making waves across social media and spilling into the real world. While I'm not personally on TikTok, the platform's influence on consumer behavior is undeniable, and today's story is a perfect example of how online trends can spark offline action. Imagine this: You're strolling through your local supermarket, and suddenly you notice an unusual number of upside-down pineapples in shopping carts. No, it's not a sudden surge in tropical fruit enthusiasm – it's the latest dating trend sweeping across Spain! Fed up with dating apps, singles are turning to supermarket-based matchmaking, hoping to find their special someone among the produce aisles. The trend, which originated on TikTok, involves placing an upside-down pineapple in your cart between 7-8 PM at Mercadona stores. This fruity signal alerts other singles that you're available and open to connection. While this pineapple phenomenon might seem like a quirky outlier, it's just one example of TikTok's growing influence on consumer behavior. Recent studies have shown that: * 57% of TikTok users report making purchases based on content they've seen on the app. * There's been a 553% growth in shopping on TikTok since the start of the pandemic. * 64% of influencers have noticed shifts in consumer behaviour, such as increased engagement on other platforms, signalling that TikTok's impact extends way beyond its own ecosystem. #BounceForward: Love, Romance, and Supportive Relationships As we explore these trends, it's important to remember that #BounceForward isn't just about personal resilience – it's also about love, romance, and having a supportive 'significant other' in your life. Sometimes, you may find the person you'll walk down the aisle with while walking down an aisle... of the supermarket! The Return to Real-World Connections The pineapple trend highlights a growing desire for authentic, in-person connections. As young people become disillusioned with traditional dating apps, we're seeing a resurgence of offline meetups and creative approaches to finding love. As we continue to #BounceForward in both our personal and professional lives, let's remember the importance of genuine human connections – whether they're formed over a shared love of pineapples or a chance encounter in the wine aisle. What are your thoughts on this trend? Have you noticed TikTok influencing consumer behavior in your industry? Let's discuss in the comments below! #ConsumerBehavior #TikTokTrends #Dating #BounceForward #AuthenticConnections

#Tinder is targeting younger consumers by introducing weekly #subscription plans to tackle their apprehension to long-term #commitment. This move is in response to #GenZ and #Millennials’ preference for lower-priced and shorter-term subscription options—and #MatchGroup (Tinder’s parent company) found that younger users are comfortable with higher-priced, shorter-duration packages. As these generations are likely to cancel subscriptions before they go on too long and eat up too much budget, this option meets them in the middle. And weekly subscriptions have already contributed to Tinder's direct revenue, reaching $509M, up 11% year-over-year. Looking ahead, Match Group is aiming to explore #AI-driven #monetizationstrategies and expand into international markets to enhance #userexperience.

Quick math - the current business of online dating is guaranteed to fail, due to its asymptotic properties. Fundamentally, these dating apps are inventory businesses, and because: 1. their "good" inventory leaves faster than their "bad", over time their inventory quality declines more and more. That is, people who can easily get dates and pair off leave the platform at a much faster rate than those who cannot, which means over time the percentage of people on the platform skews more and more towards bad inventory. As a result, in order to maintain their inventory quality, they need to get more and more good inventory to balance the increasing bad inventory size. This is obviously not scalable. 2. they monetize mostly on their bad inventory - their premium features are of little value to their good inventory, but valuable to the bad ones. In addition, since their payment model is subscriber based, they are incentivized to keep people on the platform, which is not aligned with the actual (long term) goals of the user. 3. This becomes a problem as the ratio of bad inventory grows, as it disincentivizes good inventory to come on the platform, which makes the platform less attractive for the bad inventory they are monetizing. The result is a negative feedback loop, where the platforms become less and less attractive over time, and eventually even the monetized users will start dropping off since there is not enough new good inventory. If you talk to Gen Z today, most are skewing away from dating apps. While part of that may be cultural, I think a large piece is the perceived (and likely realistic) view that the quality of these apps don't clear their bar, and are not worth their time. To fix this, dating apps need to break the current business model. Two ideas that could work: 1. Constantly create new "brands", and accept that old brands die over time. This means that dating app companies will always have 2-3 apps in play at any given moment, and should be okay with decreasing retention as long as its to one of their newer apps 2. be really opinionated about "good" and "bad" inventory experience. The value of dating apps is created via their good inventory. However, a lot of dating apps today seem to be targeting bad inventory (from app experience to marketing), which is counter to their goals. The bad inventory will naturally come, and stay. 3. Have a "ratchet" in their subscriptions for age, similar to how Uber does surge pricing. That is, the membership cost goes up over time as you remain on the platform (for bad inventory). This creates an incentive to either have bad inventory leave, improving overall inventory quality, or create more margin. There is likely some rate of increase that allows for a good balance between $ margin and inventory quality.

#Bumble’s new #marketing and branding is receiving backlash, and I have to agree. Bumble was founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd shortly after she left Tinder. Wolfe Herd has described Bumble as a "feminist dating app". In 2024, the brand has changed its business model completely— and recently rolled out these new ads. If I were a part of the #creativeteam here are a few ideas I would suggest (; -There is a #viral TikTok sound where the creator says “6’5 blue eyes… I'm looking for a man… Have the campaign say "6'5? Blue Eyes? I'll Take: In Therapy, Reliability, and Respect. Swipe If you're looking for a MAN. -Did you hear the buzz? Bumble's new feature lets men match with you first! Increase your chances of falling in love—or at least getting a “Hey beautiful” message to start your day. Try it now and see who’s buzzing in your inbox! -I'm fine being high maintenance because I'm the one maintaining it. With the new Bumble, swipe right on more matches that meet your standards. -Because sometimes, celibacy is better than enduring one more lousy date. Swipe wisely! -Dating on Bumble: the perfect excuse to get dressed up and order the same thing you would have from Grubhub at home pantless, but in a pair of “nice jeans”. With Bumble, find someone who not only appreciates you but also shares their extra fries with you. -Do it for the plot. Because even the most disastrous date makes for the best stories to keep your therapist entertained for a whole hour. Introducing the new Bumble: more matches, more stories to ensure your therapy sessions are never dull. What are your thoughts on this new campaign? Would you swipe right or left for my ideas for the brand? Share below ⏬ #datingapps #advertisement #marketing #contentstrategy