If you are the kind of person who loves the outdoors and values a strong, close-knit community, Vault Boy from Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter (Free) might just be the perfect match for you on Tinder. Well, ignoring the fact that Vault Boy is totally fictional and also is 25 and yet still called “Boy" (I smell trouble there). In a smart marketing move, Bethesda has begun a new #DateADweller ad campaign to further spread the word about its hit mobile game.
By uniting Tinder and Twitter advertising, Bethesda’s Vault Boy “assaulted’ two of the most popular social media services, gaining plenty of exposure for Fallout Shelter. At the same time, this marketing move gained the company plenty of popularity simply because of how funny the idea sounds; we’ve been hearing of Tinder a lot recently, but you don’t expect to swipe left only to find the image of a smiling cartoon staring at you.
Now, as many have noted, Tinder marketing like Bethesda’s is quite damaging for Tinder’s brand name as no one wants to be faced with an increasing number of fake accounts in his or her search for, well, eternal love. Still, I think Bethesda’s move was quite smart, and it definitely reached the target population, mobile users savvy enough to use the latest social media. I have no idea whether the marketing campaign has been successful, but I’d be surprised if the #DateADweller didn’t get at least some mobile users to try their hand at building an underground shelter.