Match.com dating teams with T-Mobile UK to promote mobile data
Friends of mine have, for a while, been banging on about Match.com and online dating in general. Apparently, it’s vogue. Or in vogue. Literally: the girly magazines, have, I’m told, been doing lots of features on online dating, to the point that it’s not just acceptable for your average London based singleton to date online, it’s required.
I’ve been on the web along time — since before there really was a proper web and when AOL was the world’s single biggest source of online content. Dating sites in those days were no-go ghettos filled with lots of terms that I really didn’t understand and anyone with a picture looked, frankly, hideous. I’m generalising slightly.
So, since it’s ‘cool’ now, I thought I’d check it out. You know, go with the flow.
I setup my profile, stuck up a few pictures and waited. Nothing.
Nothing.
Arse.
Then I got a few winks. Geez. You should have seen the profiles. I have a serious issue bringing a girl home to meet my mum if she cannot write 5 lines without making all sorts of grammatical errors. Every girl it seems, is ‘independant’ (despite there being a national newspaper by the name ‘Independent’ here in the UK), likes ‘going out’, is a ‘huge fan of travel’ and loves ‘curling up on the sofa with a bottle of wine and a DVD’. Almost every profile’s text appears to have been cut and paste from some guide in one of those women’s magazines. There are even some girls who haven’t bothered displaying some independant (sic) thought and have just written ‘Very much like Bridget Jones and left it like that. Riiiiight.
So, I’ve been doing some research, ostensibly for SMS Text News of course. I was extremely impressed to see the tie-in with T-Mobile UK’s web n’ walk service plan. Really smart indeed.
When you’re browsing around the site, you see ads such as this one:
It’s phenomenally well placed. Whoever dreamt this one up — either Match.com’s ad sales team or T-Mobile’s marketing people, well done. Very well done. I think a lot of girls in particular may well be drawn to clicking the ad for more information.
And when you do? Well, I couldn’t have done it better myself. When you click any of the ads, instead of going to a rather limiting T-Mobile service plan sign-up page, you’re sent to a cleverly written article about using Match.com on-the-go.
It’s written as though it’s a diary entry — one of the paragraphs reads:
9.00pm
Half way through the evening and the drinks are flowing, I’m having a
great time catching up with my friends and they are all very interested
in my online dating experience with Match.com. Some of them are even
interested in joining themselves! So out comes my mobile and I check my
emails – success! I have an email from the guy who winked at me earlier
on. Everyone wants to check him out before I respond so we log onto
Match.com and check his profile out. A resounding, ‘go for it’ comes
from the crowd!
This isn’t just good marketing. It’s actually true. I’ve done it — quite a few times. Yes, I’m a bit of a geek, so perhaps not the target of the text, but I’ve actually logged into Match.com on the mobile and shown people’s profiles to disbelieving friends and colleagues.
The text finishes with a link to the T-Mobile Web n’ Walk site. I hope it’s effective for them! I think it’s very important for operators to work to give people a sense of how their life can be enhanced with their services. Telling people that you can get a ‘300k 3g data connection to your phone’ isn’t quite as good as saying ‘you can use Match.com when you’re on the bus and show your mates potential dates’.
Thus, kudos to T-Mobile and Match.com for the campaign.
