“On the first practice run of falling from the ladder, the actor almost fell for real,” recalls Mischief ECD Bianca Guimaraes. “She threw herself back so fearlessly that her co-star almost dropped her. We were all like, ‘Holy shit!'”

Next, during a storm, two smitten kittens hail a cab:

Note the license plate. Subtle.

Finally, rain beats down on a couple in a field of flowers (alas, with no cabs anywhere in sight).

“The production crew had to hire a snake wrangler on ‘Rain,'” Guimaraes says. “The guy was walking around to grab snakes and move them away from the set.”

Cute story. Icky, but cute.

As for the overall approach, “Daters today are nostalgic for the meet-cutes they’ve seen in old romcoms,” says Stephanie Danzi, SVP of marketing at Tinder. “But the reality is that the rom-com meet-cute is the exception, not the rule. Tinder is where modern-day meet-cutes happen.”

Of course, romcom spoofs are as common as broken hearts. Still, Tinder succeeds by nodding to genre conventions while not overloading on satire. The campaign zings a treasured (if trite) art-form, good-naturedly goofing on its audience’s tastes.

“Only 8 percent of offline daters say it’s easy for them to find a date IRL, and so many missed out on opportunities to connect in the midst of the pandemic,” adds brand CMO Melissa Hobley. “At Tinder, we want to empower our users to find meaningful connections that carry into IRL.”

Showing text convos during the spots—these exchanges are very non-Hollywood, natch—reinforces that notion. The app experience fuses with real-life hopes and expectations, sparking enough cuteness to make viewers smile, scream, sigh … or whatever.

This ad prompted us to do a New Year’s cleansing of every contact with the last name “Tinder” from our phones. Justin Tinder, we hardly new ye.

Below, we learn that if a swipe goes well, daters can score a second wardrobe, a goodnight kiss (in the A.M.!) or an Italian who knows all the right spots … for authentic cuisine.

“Our brand platform ‘It Starts With a Swipe’ is resonating because it is rooted in real user, brand and product truths,” says Stephanie Danzi, SVP, head of global marketing at Tinder. “As we built this third wave of creative work, we knew that Gen Z is completely redefining what relationships look like, and they are dating with no specific outcome in mind.”

“They are optimistic and excited about their dating adventure and all of the opportunities and life-changing moments it can uncover,” she says. “They are exploring with confidence and without labels. We wanted to showcase that spirit of possibility and exploration, and we did that by celebrating the emotions and micro-milestones that come from the early stages of meeting someone new.”

“The creative is meant to deliver that feeling of butterflies that come at the beginning of a relationship, when you’re just getting to know each other, and remind you that so many amazing possibilities can come from a swipe.”

Need help deciding whether to swipe left or right? Tinder’s got you covered.

The brand engaged rapper Col Leray to help introduce Matchmaker, a new feature that lets friends and relatives chime in on potential dates and give advice and guidance through the app.

She appears in a fantastical :60 set in a royal court. Potential suitors endure a very modern, tongue-in-cheek grilling, fielding queries about their streaming habits and spewing bad romance rhymes in an effort to score.

Mattress on the floor = rejected? That disqualifies half the loft-dwellers in SoHo from finding true love!

“Handing your phone over to the friend group was the original vibe check,” Coi says in campaign materials. “Obviously, you want your friends to like whoever you’re crushing on, and Tinder Matchmaker is a fun way to get the bestie seal of approval.”

Mischief @ No Fixed Address teamed up with Pretty Bird director Calmatic to create the commercial. It follows the agency’s spirited passion plays for the brand, and channels the visual elan Calmatic (aka Charles Kidd II) displayed for Mailchimp and the NBA.

“For years, singles have asked their friends to help find their next match on Tinder, and now we’re making that so easy with Tinder Matchmaker,” says brand CMO Melissa Hobley. “Tinder Matchmaker brings your circle of trust into your dating journey and helps you see the possibilities you might be overlooking from the perspective of those closest to you.”

So, let Mom and Auntie pick your dates. What could possibly go wrong?

As for casting Leray, “We wanted someone that appeals to the next generation of young daters,” Dylan Wagman, ACD at Mischief, tells Muse. “She’s unapologetically herself and someone who really values her friendships. We actually cast one of her best friends to star alongside her to keep the vibe on set authentic.”

Her song “Players,” with its on-point lyrics about relationships, plays at the end—but what’s up with the costumed royal weirdness?

“We’re essentially bringing the whole Matchmaker experience to life—friends getting together to judge potential matches who’ll perhaps one day be entering into their circle of friends,” Wagman says. “It’s a colorful, fun, futuristic court of popular opinion that mixes the familiar and surreal.”

Any BTS stuff to share?

“Yanking our left-swiped suitors out of frame over and over and over again had us half-laughing, half checking to see that they were alright,” he says. “They were fantastic and unscathed, and we love how those moments amplify the spot.”

CREDITS

Tinder
Faye Iosotaluno, COO
Melissa Hobley, Global CMO
Stephanie Danzi, SVP, Global Head of Marketing
Philip Price Fry, VP Communications
Marielle Donahue, Head of Culture and Social
Rodrigo Fontes, VP Global Marketing
Devin Colleran, Global Brand Director
Melenie Becerra, Global Brand Marketing Coordinator
Rachel Lewis, Director, Global Media
Kyle Fagan, Senior Media Manager, North America

Mischief @ No Fixed Address
Greg Hahn, Co-Founder & CCO 
Bianca Guimaraes, ECD & Partner
Kevin Mulroy, ECD & Partner
James Leake, Associate Creative Director 
Dylan Wagman, Associate Creative Director
Kaitlin Kehoe, Art Director
Patrick LaBelle, Copywriter 
Will Dempster, EVP Production
Jeff McCrory, Head of Strategy
Ed Gunn, Group Strategy Director
Oliver McAteer, Head of Development
Kerry McKibbin, President & Partner
Tyler Harris, Managing Director 
Taylor Jerome, Account Director
Maddy Vonderhaar, Senior Account Executive 

Flying Television
Lori Levine, Founder
Rebecca Horn, Talent Executive 

Production: Pretty Bird
Calmatic, Director
Jeanne Stawiarski, Executive Producer
Tracy Hauser, Head of Production
Melissa Larsen Ekholm, Line Producer

Editorial: Arcade
Sila Soyer, Executive Producer
Dave Anderson, Editor

Post FX
Andrew Cravotta, Producer

Oct. 3 is Mean Girls Day for those who celebrate, but did you know that it’s also World Romance Scam Prevention Day? (Part of the broader Cybersecurity Awareness Month.)

Tinder and Match Group teamed up with Mean Girls actor Jonathan Bennett to protect users’ hearts—and their wallets—from online scammers.

A 70-second spot features Bennett, clad in a Tinder-branded, pink high school jacket. He call outs the mean people to avoid online, like “love-bombers” and “money-seekers.” Your spidey sense should tingle when an online paramour comes on too heavy with complements and affection, or when they ask you for money. Swipe left!

Created by Mischief @ No Fixed Address, the ad nods to the 2004 film starring Bennett and Lindsay Lohan, while also giving sound advice on how to steer clear of fraud.

And it’s not just older folks falling prey to scammers. More younger adults are reporting romance scams every year, per Match.

“Fans have a lot of fun celebrating all their favorite memes and quotes every Oct. 3, but it’s also important that we can take this day to acknowledge some important lessons about how we interact with others online,” Bennett says in press materials. “We want everyone to continue to recognize this day, while also being more aware of the types of common behaviors of online scammers to watch out for.”

The ad is running on Tinder and Match’s social channels. Sibling dating site Hinge is sending in-app messages to users, advising them not to send money or take investment advice from people they’ve never met.

Developed by Mischief @ No Fixed Address, the ads were directed by Los Pérez (Tania Verduzco and Adrian Pérez). The Barcelona-based duo also helmed the campaign’s debut commercials that launched in February.

The latest work again showcases the directors’ gorgeous, highly-stylized approach to commercial filmmaking. It was shot around Barcelona in June, and each of the ambitious shorts presented challenges, according to Mischief senior producer Coleman Sweeney.

Take “Summer Fling,” which offers an overhead view of a couple lying on the ground, face-to-face, as their surroundings spin and evolve to reflect changing seasons. To achieve that effect, the spot was shot in a studio with a rotating overhead camera jib.

“We had an editor on set piecing together the best takes in real-time to make sure everything would flow smoothly,” says Sweeney. “After each scene, the set was replaced and exact body placement was replicated to ensure a perfect match. If you look closely, you’ll notice props and items that continue through [the changing scenes] and match the seasons.”

“Breakfast Boy” opens on a person lying in bed. But the viewers see him from an unusual angle, as if they’re embedded in the mattress beneath him.

“The rig was situated under the bed and pulled up by hand to reveal the talent,” Sweeney explains. “It took a fair bit of practice, but everything was smooth and seamless. Los Pérez are very detail-oriented and map everything out, so there’s no overshooting or extra scenes.”

And, amazingly, “Everything was captured in-camera except for some set extensions and rig removal.”

Tania Verduzco and Adrián Pérez—Barcelona-based partners in life, known professionally as the directing duo Los Pérez—have a way of turning every commercial they make into an epic surging with cinematic energy.

Their latest spot, “Going All the Way” for Tinder via Mischief @ No Fixed Address, opens on a couple sharing a first kiss. It’s so intense, they both float out of their shoes and into the air, embarking on a relationship with their feet rarely touching the ground.

“The Getaway Driver,” a slick trailer for the Xbox game Forza Horizon 5 from 215 McCann, features actor and former professional soccer player Cristo Fernández (who plays Dani Rojas on the Apple+ series Ted Lasso). In the ad, he portrays both the driver and passenger on a wild, high-speed adventure, culminating in a street race with Colombian singer Karol G.

Spots and branded content for Paramount+, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Taco Bell and others similarly blend bold narratives with colorful art direction and visual flair. 

Not surprisingly, these imaginative directors, who have collaborated for a decade, are planners who enjoy working out the intricacies of scenes and crafting detailed storyboards before their cameras roll.  

“For directors, shooting is almost like a drug because it’s intense,” Adrián says. “You’re basically coming from zero, from being in your house, from your ordinary life—and then jumping into the craziness of pre-production and production. And that kind of rush is very addictive.”

Below, the pair (represented by Biscuit Filmworks in the United States, Grayskull in Spain, The Lift in Mexico, Caviar in the U.K. and Solab in France) talk about creating worlds where almost anything is possible. They touch on the benefits of co-directing and the fateful meeting that led to their relationship and the formation of Los Pérez.

MUSE: Let’s talk about your latest work, the Tinder campaign, which includes “Going All the Way.” What was the brief like?

Tania: It was a little too straightforward because it was about a couple making out in different spots of the house. That was the main brief. And then, of course, you discovered that they went on their honeymoon. So, the concept was, after the swipe, it’s not only a one-night stand. You can have more commitment, or find that person.

But, you know, for us, because we’re also a couple, we were talking about, “How can we start a couple make out?” We thought, everything starts with the first kiss, right? The first kiss is when you know if that person is the one or not.

So, we said, okay, we have to find that first kiss. And then everything was based on poetry, or a metaphor for how when you are making out, you don’t hear a noise, you don’t care if it’s raining outside, you don’t know where the staircase is, where the kitchen is, because you are just with that person, concentrating. So, it was that journey.

We thought, yeah, we can elevate that passion in a more surreal way, through magical realism.

Did you work with a choreographer on the Tinder spot?

Tania: We did not have a choreographer. We had to work with the actors, kind of see the choreography with them. 

Adrián: We wanted to have two or three highlights in terms of performance. It was like a story map in a way. It was: We want to start here, we want to have this moment here, and that moment there. That was one of the tricky parts of the job. We wanted to have the continuity of the story, of the movement. So, we had very technical shots. It was a bit challenging connecting everything in a way that felt continuous, kind of natural.

There’s lots of movement in the things you make. I love how the guy takes a sip of a Coke in “Open That Coca-Cola” [a Wieden+Kennedy London spot featuring the music of Tyler the Creator] and breaks into a jerky dance. Is he really dancing that way, or did you speed up his moves?

Tania: We worked a lot for that. We started developing choreography, and the idea was to feel possessed by the Coke. Just take that sip and suddenly [experience] something that you cannot control. But we wanted to do it in camera with actors. We worked with great choreographers [Zoyi Lindy and Supple Nam] in South Africa.

So, you cast dancers for the spot?

Tania: That was a must. Except for the vendor at the very end, who was an actor.

Adrián: That was the only trick that we did impose in terms of the dancing because we [filmed] somebody else dancing, and we put [the actor’s head] on top of that [dancer]. It was the only way, because we really liked the actor’s face, his performance. It was a compromise.

How much of your work is shot practically vs. computer-generated? Do you have a preference, or do you go with whatever works best?

Adrián: We shoot a lot in camera. Obviously, these days, post production is an incredible ally for accomplishing crazy shots. But we try to accomplish as much as we can in camera basically because we always feel, as directors, that if you didn’t shoot it, it doesn’t count.

Tania: Or it’s not yours.

Adrián: It’s like you [can] rely too much on post.

Tania: Or we at least shoot a lot of plates, a lot of stuff, so we can build in post, but based always on reality, because we care about the textures, about the lighting. [Plates are individual shots composited by VFX artists to create scenes.]

There are wow moments in everything you make—like the green, S-shaped staircase in A$AP Rocky’s fictional NYC home in the Klarna spot. I assume people come to you looking for lots of creative visual ideas and wow moments.

Tania: Yes, pretty much. A$AP Rocky’s symbol is the dollar [sign]. So, we thought, yeah, of course, if this is his house, the staircase should represent that.

Did you build that beautiful, green-carpeted staircase for real?

Adrián: We couldn’t build it completely. We built half the staircase and mirrored half and created it [in post]. It was a tricky process. We shot it in plates, and we managed to do it in post with the help of [VFX studio] No.8.

Tania: We knew exactly what we needed to build because of the perspective and because of the shape. 

It seems like you never take an easy job. Everything you do requires intense planning and effort.

Adrián: When you are lucky to work with clients that really want to push it, and they give you freedom, that’s when, for directors, the work is really stunning. When you have so many restrictions, the final result is losing something. It’s losing ambition, it’s losing…

Tania: Personality.

Adrián: Yeah. So, we always try really hard to make something special.

Can you tell me about your individual backgrounds, and why were you interested in filmmaking?

Tania: I was born in Mexico City, and I studied communications, but always was really involved in theater and dance. I did a lot of theater. And then at some point I shot a short film, and that film was recognized, and I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s what I want to do. I want to shoot movies.’ So, the only way to do it was to find a place [to study film]. Barcelona was the place. Also, I wanted to travel to Europe because I love European movies.

Adrián: I’m from Spain, and I was a terrible student. A really, really bad student. For me, school was jail. I was always fantasizing. I was drawing a lot of comic books when I was little. I had that need of telling stories. My motivation was watching Blade Runner. I remember the day when I first watched Blade Runner I was blown away by the ending speech by Rutger Hauer. I was like, “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” I want to do something like that. That’s why I decided to leave my hometown and move to Barcelona to study cinema.

Do you remember the first time you met, or became aware of each other?

Adrián: The first time we saw each other was in a club.

Tania: We didn’t know we were studying in the same program.

Adrián: Yeah, because she was going [to class] in the morning, and I was going in the afternoon. And she skipped a class one morning.

Tania: So I went to the afternoon class, and the teacher loved to put frames [on display] randomly, and you could guess which movie it was. I saw the frame of this kid with a snow sled, and I was like: Citizen Kane! 

Adrián: I was like, who was that nerd? And then I was like, oh, the girl from the club. But we didn’t talk. And one day my editor—we were doing this crappy short film—told me, “Hey, I’m also editing a short I like even more than yours.” And I was like, “Hold on one second—I need to watch it.” He played it, and it was actually cooler than my short film. And then Tania stepped in the room [it was her film], and I was like, “Oh, hello.”

Tania: And here we are.

Did you immediately work on projects together?

Tania: We didn’t start co-directing [at first]. We started with writing, or giving ideas to each other. And it worked. And then Adrián had a band, a really good band, and we started doing their music videos. 

Adrián: At some point we said, “Hey, we really enjoy working together. Why don’t we just direct together?” And we did, little by little mastering co-direction because it’s not an easy thing to do, especially when you are young, and you think you are right all the time, and you don’t really see the vision of the other director. So, it’s a process. Finally, I think we understood how to work together. And now, it’s our life.

How do you collaborate on something like Tinder? Do you start creating together and then divvy up duties? Or are you always working on every element together? I assume how you work also depends on the project.

Adrián: Yeah, it depends on the project for sure. On set, I enjoy being with the DP and working on the lighting and the shots, and Tania is with the actors and their direction. But we really enjoy working on the whole thing. It’s not like we split completely and say, “Hey, you focus on this, and I focus on that.” We’ve merged all the ideas.

Tania: We split the duties just to have a smooth and fast shoot. We are both perfectionists. 

Adrián: It’s about trust.

Tania: Absolutely. And then it’s just like, “Hey, Adrián, let’s change the lens because I don’t feel that this is the right lens. Let’s do that. Perfect.” Or, “Something’s not working with the actor,” and he steps in. It’s about how can we make it better, how can we improve the other one’s work.

Adrián: Having her perspective on every single job makes me a better director. And, hopefully, I can help her, too.

Tania: The good thing about co-directing is we learn from each other. Always.

By now we’re accustomed to seeing how masks, social distancing and other affordances of this strange year express themselves in advertising. Dating has become more creative as a result, and here, it shows: There are VR headset dates, dates in separate wading pools, hopscotch dates, and screen-projected first encounters.

Watching it, we’re filled with the sense of how Covid has changed the way we negotiate physical space with strangers, especially when to gauge mutual chemistry. Playfulness becomes more important, and that feeling, too, of unstated boundaries—how well can you read someone you just met but might like? Is this close too close?

“In Our Own Way” also conveys something interesting about how distance slowly closes as intimacy develops. Bit by bit, with charming subtlety, people draw nearer.

 “The pandemic has significantly diminished opportunities of chance encounters and interactions from our lives, especially for our young members. But human connection endures, unconstrained from rules of physical distance and barriers [both social and physical],” says Taru Kapoor, GM of India for Tinder and Match Group.

“Our members have creatively co-created and figured out new rules of meeting, hanging out and falling in love. None of this is surprising. Gen Z has always set their own pace, created their own rules, and thrived despite constraints, and Covid has only accelerated this ingenuity. This is the spirit we are championing and celebrating.”

(A totally defensive sidenote: While we recognize that so much of advertising is about relating to the younger cohort, it merits saying—let’s just get this out of the way—that no previous generation has yielded cooler, more fancy-free thirty-somethings than millennials. We are creatively designing our lives while the security of pensions, job steadiness, environmental stability and the American dream collapse around us. Just. Saying. But yeah. Good job at making dating better, youths!)

“In Our Own Way” was directed by Jess Kohl, with original music from Mikey McCleary and vocals by Raja Kumari, an Indian-American rapper, singer, songwriter and dancer.