Creative Corner: Tinder's RelationChips, Liquid Death's Toilet Taste Test and The Dad Shift's Dad Strike

An almost Neapolitan selection of stories this week from Fanclub's Paul Lucas.

I have put together for you a mixed bag of creative spanning romance, toilet taste tests and, with Father’s Day approaching in the UK, a paternity pay picket from dads. 

Read on for campaigns from Tinder, Liquid Death and The Dad Shift.

Tinder's RelationChips - A snackable love story

Apparently, a new relationship starts every three seconds on Tinder, which is about the same amount of time it takes to scoff a crisp - a sweet and spicy crisp. 

Enter, "RelationChips" – a limited-edition packet of crips from Tinder designed to make its three second claim a bit more… palatable.

The dating app is offering 1,500 bags of the sweet and spicy RelationChips, available for free, with each bag coming with a QR code, offering the snacker a free week of Tinder Gold.

Based on the claim, I’m guessing everyone could get a little taste of romance by the end of each pack.

Liquid Death's gutsy (and gassy) taste test

Now Liquid Death has retreated from UK shores, I only get to admire its bizarre, yet entertaining, campaigns from afar. And this one is no less bizarre than any other. A taste test conducted entirely on the toilet.

Carried out with a dose of deadpan humour (see what I did there?), the campaign pits Liquid Death’s sparkling water against high-fibre prebiotic sodas in a showdown for the ages: the 'Toilet Taste Test'. And naturally, it comes complete with a symphony of flatulence. (I’m guessing the sound effects were added in post, but with Liquid Death, you never quite know.)

The premise is brilliantly simple, as ever. While Liquid Death's soda-flavoured sparkling water boasts a mere 10 calories, its fibrous competitors pack up to 9g of fibre per can – more, as they gleefully point out, than some laxatives. To hammer this home, the brand filmed consumers chugging these gut-busting beverages while quite literally perched on commodes. The resulting discomfort, contrasted with the effortless consumption of Liquid Death, is effectively unsettling.

This campaign is classic Liquid Death: fearless, absurd, and undeniably positions Liquid Death as the less, shall we say, explosive option.

The Dad Strike: A Bold Statement That Hit Home

With Father’s Day approaching, UK dads staged a different kind of industrial action this week. Not a train strike, nor a public sector dispute, but a powerful, poignant protest spearheaded by The Dad Shift: the Dad Strike.

The core of the campaign was brilliantly simple: dads across the UK were encouraged to either "picket or pick up." While some joined demonstrations outside government buildings in London and Edinburgh to protest the UK's notoriously stingy statutory paternity leave – the least generous in Europe - those unable to make it to a picket line made a deliberate point of doing the school or nursery run.

The protests highlighted the everyday reality for so many fathers who miss out on crucial bonding time due to inadequate leave, while simultaneously spotlighting the disproportionate burden often placed on mothers and their desire for equitable parenting roles.

The Dad Shift's research has found that less than 3% of the UK's parental leave investment supports active fathers, or as George Gabriel, co-founder of The Dad Shift, eloquently put it, "Three per cent? That's like making the mums play a full 90 minutes and bringing on the dads to play out a couple of minutes of injury time.”

As a father of three, I’ve had the “pleasure” of just six weeks of paternity leave in my time. Two of those weeks I even had to cut in half so that I could at least spend one week with my prematurely born son after he was allowed home from hospital.

More power to The Dad Shift.

That brings us to the end of Creative Corner for this week!

As ever, if you’re launching something that deserves a spot in Creative Corner, or have seen a campaign you just love, please do share it with us. Email paul.lucas@fanclubpr.com