SINGAPORE - Despite its matchmaking capabilities, even a dating app needs a little help to reach out to singles looking for love.
Happn, a geo-based dating app, has chosen W Asia, the regional hub of London-based agency W, to help build on in its initial success in Singapore.
Created in the city of love—Paris—Happn uses geolocation to connect users who have crossed paths with each other for activities labelled under tags such as "Grab a Bite" and "Catch a Movie". W Asia's strategy to bring the brand's vision through F&B partnerships, PR initiatives and branded content will capitalise on this feature.
Targeting millennials and the PMEB (professionals, managers, executives and businesspeople) segment, Happn is currently available in 40 countries. It arrived in Singapore shortly after its launch in Paris in 2014.
A W Asia spokesperson told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the forthcoming activation, the first in the region, follows the app's organic acquisition of 110,000 users in Singapore. The city-state, which reportedly has a growing proportion of single residents aged 25 to 29, represents a strong market on a per capita basis for the app, compared to Thailand (310,000 users), Hong Kong (170,000 users) and Philippines (130,000 users).
W Asia aims to further increase the app's user share by rolling out a series of initiatives and partnerships across Singapore to reinforce the brand's unique real-time element and boost its contemporary positioning with a focus on culture and lifestyles.
The launch also follows Happn's recent move to feature content from key advertisers.
“Happn is growing in a very competitive market; that is why we needed an agency that completely understood our brand and proposed creative ideas that delivered much more than the standard PR responses," Thevi de Coninck, international PR and comms manager of Happn, said in a statement.
The brand joins the list of the agency's other lifestyle accounts including Foodpanda, Singapore-based social payment app Kashmi, entertainment venue CÉ LA VI, contemporary art festival The Parallel Art Group and The Classic Rock Awards Tokyo.