While MATCH.COM and eHarmony were squabbling about which of them has triggered the most marriages in the US, Zoosk was quietly developing its own, more engagingly true to life point of view about relationships, First Comes Like.
Dating sites have been big business for about a decade. That’s long enough for most people to realise they do not hold your fairy godmother’s magic wand. They’re search tools. It’s the 21st century’s dirty little secret that search tools are far from perfect.
Zoosk has probably done more to achieve accurate search results than it intended. First Comes Like may make more people persevere beyond profile and first meeting. Its intention, though, is to be the honest site. The one that gets how dating really is. Makes you feel like you’re ‘normal’. Makes you smile at your dating foibles, Makes you feel like it gets you…and therefore, becomes the dating site you trust. (Never mind logic).
The 30 second version, with a voiceover, went to air on TV. A 60 second version, with more ‘we get how it is’ moments and no voiceover, is online only. The campaign is the first work for Zoosk by Muhtayzik/Hoffer in San Francisco.
“We looked at the whole category of online dating, and it seemed strange that this thing that should be intimate and personal was being sold like a used car, with promises like, ‘Most marriages on this site!’ ” the agency’s co-founder and executive creative director, John Matejczyk, stated. [Btw, Muhtayzik – as in Muhtayzik/Hoffer – is how you pronounce his name.]
“There’s this false, overburdened approach to dating with these sites that are so much about getting married, but just ‘falling in like’ with someone is more attainable. We thought, why not enjoy the process and experience the beauty of meeting someone you really like?”
Allison Braley, the vice president of marketing and communications at Zoosk, said that the company conducted focus groups with single people, and few were itching to marry.
“For some small percentage of people, it’s like, ‘I’m joining this site because I want to get married tomorrow.’ But for a lot more people it was, ‘I want to meet somebody who I enjoy spending time with and sure, I’d love to get married, but I’m much more interested in figuring that out on my own.’ ”
The campaign is being supported with OOH advertising. Billboards in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles will show would-be couples, photographed by Winnie Au, sneaking glances.
“We’re not showing people hugging, or holding hands, or kissing. You get a sense of this woman looking over at this guy and thinking, ‘Hmm, he’s not bad,’ and this guy looking over at this woman and thinking, ‘Yeah, she could be something.’ That first sort of spark is in many ways so very exciting,” Matejczyk remarked.
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