• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

Love is sometimes blind, but it’s usually not deaf. 

That’s why popular online dating app Hinge has released a free audiobook on Spotify and Libby. 

It features five pieces written and narrated by authors Tembe Denton-Hurst, Nicola Dinan, Curtis Garner, Raven Smith, and Rufi Thorpe. Each author partnered with a real Hinge couple to turn conversations from the early stages of their relationships into narrative stories.

“Every time I listen to these stories, I get chills, because they’re just so relatable to what people are feeling and what we’ve been hearing from our daters themselves,” Tamika Young, Hinge’s chief marketing and communications officer, tells Inc.

The effort is the third year of the brand’s “No Ordinary Love” campaign, which tells the stories of real-life couples who met on the platform. 

“While past campaign stories were entirely in written formats, this year is all about audio,” according to Marketing Brew. “It’s part of Hinge’s efforts to further target Gen Z daters by reaching them where they are. Last year, Hinge introduced a brand newsletter into the campaign that has also included physical books and zines.”

To help promote the audiobook, Hinge created its first-ever audio ads and is also running an OOH campaign in New York and London. 

Younger audiences have shown a growing appetite for audiobooks. 

“We wanted to create something that felt less like a campaign and more like a story people could recognize themselves in,” said Jamie Knowles, managing director of Dazed Studio, according to Trend Hunter. “Audio gave us the space to slow down, sit with those moments and remind people that vulnerability is often what makes a connection meaningful.”

The goal of the effort  is to help “daters show up as themselves in this world of navigating different complexities,” Young tells Marketing Brew. On the brand side, Hinge is hoping to boost brand consideration metrics and shape brand perception, she says.

"These stories specifically center on ‘moments during which daters choose honesty over playing it cool’ early on,” according to YPulse. “[That] aligns well with Gen Z looking for the opposite of nonchalance in their dating life, though many are scared of it themselves.”