Every year, Grindr compiles anonymous aggregated data from our global user base and surveys our community on an array of hot topics and trends for Grindr Unwrapped: a fun, informal, and highly engaging year-end report that consistently gets both the media and the LGBTQ+ community talking.
Through this project, we hope to position Grindr as an authority on the global LGBTQ+ community; to underscore our ubiquity in pop culture and unrivaled international reach; to celebrate our users in a sex-positive way that destigmatizes hookup culture; and to garner positive earned media coverage and social engagement to build brand affinity.
We release Grindr Unwrapped annually, and each year poses a unique challenge: how do we make this year’s report feel new and exciting, and ensure that it’s bigger, better, and more impactful than last year’s.
For 2023, we decided to keep things fun, fresh, and—most importantly—frisky, by leaning into the data our users share with us on their kink preferences and practices. By tapping into our kink data (specifically, which “tags” users listed on their profiles), we were able to expand on previous report favorites like “countries with the highest number of tops/bottoms” into categories like “highest percentage of feet fans,” “highest percentage of femme tops” and “highest percentage of pit lovers,” and more.
To bring this new, kink-focused data to life, we mined vintage gay classified magazines from the 70s and 80s, which were used by queer people to connect anonymously via mail. These early forms of subversive, queer forums functioned as a sort of proto-Grindr. We wanted our visual direction to pay homage to this era of LGBTQ+ culture where people had to be incredibly creative and resourceful in order to connect safely.
The resulting execution of Grindr Unwrapped 2023 closely resembles the layout of these early classified magazines with its illustration style, use of highly varied and stylized typography, and sexy, straightforward language, while also nodding to Grindr’s visual branding and tone of voice. The result is both an homage to the resilient ways our community connected in decades past and a state of the union on where, what, and how Grindr users loved in 2023.
Grindr Unwrapped garnered 26 pieces of unique coverage by top-tier outlets, an additional 51 placements via syndication, and 309 newswire pickups, resulting in more than 348 million estimated media impressions. We launched the project with exclusive coverage in Rolling Stone under the headline, “The Gays Declare Beyoncé as the ‘Undisputed’ Mother of the Year.” Other outlets included Hypebae, Huffpost, USA Today, and more. 100% of the coverage was positive/neutral, contributing to our goal of brand affinity.
The Grindr Unwrapped microsite attracted over 1.7 million unique website visitors within its first month of publishing. Average time on site via direct traffic was more than 30 seconds, and average time on site from referral traffic via earned media surpassed 2+ minutes (up 2x from last year’s site).
On Grindr’s owned socials, we earned over 1.5 million organic impressions, 108k engagements (with 2.6k shares alone) for an engagement rate of 6.8%, which well outpaced our average cross-platform engagement rate). Clearly, this content resonated with our users and followers, and echoed far beyond our usual spheres of engagement.
