Strategy Analysis - Match.com turns dating into 'live' ad

public and Match staff

Target audience: Adults 30-40 (female bias)

Budget: Undisclosed



AGENCIES

Creative: HRP (New York)

Communications planning: Monkey

PR: Cherish PR, Monkey

Media buying: M2M

STRATEGY

Online dating is a growing phenomenon in the UK; as people work harder
and put in longer hours at work, dating sites are bringing all kinds of
people together to find love.

Match.com is the UK's number-one dating website, and has boasted the
highest number of unique visitors in the past year. Most of its
subscribers are seriously seeking a partner, rather than "just a
shag".

Subscribers upload written profiles, photographs of themselves and
details of the type of person they are seeking. Match.com then picks out
potential suitors from its database.

One of the biggest problems online brands face is how to "live" offline.
Historically, the dating website has advertised using TV, outdoor and
radio.

The idea was to take Match.com to people by allowing them to interact
with the brand, not just each other. The aim was to go beyond
traditional advertising and deliver something that not only paid for
itself but was fun for Match.com users, as well as the public. It was
also hoped the campaign would explain the service and underline its
status as the UK's premier dating site.

EXECUTION

- TV: The climax of the idea gave one male and one female Match.com
member the chance to find love through Match.com, and appear live on
peaktime TV. Three consecutive solus breaks in Love Island were secured
on 6 August. The ads were shot immediately before transmission, in front
of a live studio audience, and then transmitted "as live". The first saw
the host introduce the lucky winners, the second gave the winning man
the opportunity to sell himself, and the third saw the winning woman's
turn.

- Online: Before TV activity, contestants uploaded videos to a special
"Live Love" Match.com microsite, comprising a 30-second pitch describing
why they shouldn't be single. Other Match.com users then judged the
entries, with two winners going forward to the final TV stage.

The idea centred on "an event" into which all marketing activity fed.
The live ads crowned the campaign, providing a "money shot" after the
positive "foreplay" of the other activity, which comprised three
stages.

- PR: A national PR campaign was launched through Cherish PR, using
"sneezers" to spread the word; and an online partnership with MSN and
the Match.com microsite (the main marketing tool) generated national
interest, urging people to join Match.com and existing members to become
involved - either by submitting their own videos and campaign for votes,
or simply through voting. There was also activity PR in local and
national press and radio.

More TV activity surrounded the event itself, including ten-second
top-and-tail promo TV ads produced by the New York agency HRP; Sunday
press activity; and continued PR activity online, through the Match.com
site and on ITV. After the "climax" live ads, the winners were
interviewed on regional ITV, and their dating progress tracked on the
live ad website.

RESULTS

Video entries to the competition exceeded their target by 23 per cent.
PR coverage featured in The Sun, the Daily Star and The Express. The day
after the live ads aired was the highest month for subscriptions in
Match.com's history, and was 3.5 per cent higher than the
best-performing month for the year.

Google searches that day led to the highest number of new subscriptions
in the history of Match.com's relationship with the search engine, and
these have continued to increase since. MSN has also seen a 23 per cent
increase in registrations and a 39 per cent rise in subscriptions.

THE VERDICT - Steve Hobbs, head of planning and integration, Carat

Upon hearing I was to review the Match.com campaign, I was looking
forward to reading all about the growth of singledom, the phenomenon of
social networking, the buzz of word of mouth and the importance of trust
in a virtual world.

However, the thinking behind this activity seems a bit more
old-fashioned than that. In the past, Match.com has run
awareness-building activity on TV, radio and outdoor. Though this work
is executionally very different, on face value it's difficult to see how
it achieves much more.

The holy grail for online businesses is to understand how offline
communication drives their brands, both in terms of volume (in this
case, subscriptions) and perception. Without doubt, this campaign
combines on- and offline well.

Dating has always been a popular spectator sport - just witness Blind
Date's ten million-plus Saturday-evening audiences. The big idea - to
produce long-form ads - modernises dating TV and is a cute exploitation
of single people's inevitable search for a partner, set around a show in
which celebrities show us how not to do it.

Targeting Match.com users to build the story is powerful, and the
success of the activity lies in the combination of PR, search and the
ubiquitous partnership with MSN (not another homepage takeover,
please?). The results look impressive in terms of behavioural effect,
and subscriptions are growing. The question remains, though, whether
this would have happened anyway through a combination of a "normal" TV
campaign and well-managed search activity.

The campaign successfully delivers on its objective of taking Match.com
to people and explaining its services, with well-executed ideas. But it
is unclear whether the work was founded on the consumer insight that a
social stigma remains attached to online dating, or whether many still
believe people do not represent themselves in a virtual world as they
are in the real world.

If indeed this campaign was designed to shift people's attitudes and
thus change behaviour in this area, it would be very impressive. I would
be interested, therefore, in knowing how this activity influenced
people's perception of online dating, whether the "live ad" couple are
now a laughing stock in their local, non-virtual communities ... or
whether they are now single!

Score: 4 out of 5.