Dating App Bumble Used a Food Truck to Fry Up 'Catfish'

When browsing through a dating app, weeding out the weirdos is priority number one. But at the same time, you also have to be wary of the "too good to be true" profiles. Yes, you're amazing and clearly the coolest, most attractive people want to date you, but even an awesome single like yourself can still be the target of "catfishing"—getting conned by someone using a false profile. The app Bumble, which sets itself apart from other dating apps by requiring women to make the first move, recently added a new feature to hopefully prevent such fake activity and figured the best way to spread the word would be with literal catfish.

To promote its new "Photo Verification" feature which requires users to snap selfies in specific poses to prove they aren't using someone else's pics, last week, Bumble handed out actual catfish-based dishes from a food truck parked in a few locations around New York, including in the heart of Brooklyn's hip Williamsburg neighborhood. The bright yellow Airstream branded with the name "Great Catch: Catfish Just Got Served" offered free catfish creations like sliders and blackened fish tacos crafted by Top Chef contestant Sam Talbot to anyone who downloaded the Bumble app. Hammering home the message were other branded items, including cups that read, "Bottoms Up, Bottom Feeders Down."

"I don't think something like photo verification is a really sexy feature to talk about," Krystle Loyland, CEO at Preacher, the Austin-based agency behind the campaign, told AdAge, "but it's a really important one… You've got to do that in a playful way." It's certainly an interesting promotion, but though handing out catfish is about as playful as it comes, at the same time, the scent of freshly blackened catfish doesn't necessarily fit under the umbrella of "sexy" either – even if it does come from a super cool food truck.