Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Tuesday, December 17 2013 @ 09:26 pm
Last modified on
It turns out Oscar Wilde was right when he wrote "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." At least, he was right about eHarmony, a century before the dating service even existed. Believe it or not, eHarmony's newest matching service, eH+, was inspired by Hollywood.
In 2012, Grant Langston, eHarmony's Vice President of Content and Customer Experience, was given the script to a new film called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He'd been given the script because 20th Century Fox had written eHarmony into the story, and wanted the company's cooperation in making its fictionalized service as accurate as possible.
Langston found that the eHarmony portrayed in the movie was nothing like the eHarmony he knew in real life. Once he discovered that Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig would take on the starring roles, he knew something had to be done. He couldn't let such major movie stars, who were bound to draw a large audience, promote an incorrect version of the website. Instead, he saw the film as an opportunity to launch a premium service within eHarmony and make the real-life dating service match up with the one that moviegoers would see on screen.
So eHarmony set out to build the service that was written in the script. In the film, Ben Stiller's Walter Mitty character speaks on the phone with his "eHarmony counselor," who guides him through the process by helping him to build a great profile and coaching him when he hits stumbling blocks. It didn't take long for Langston to see the value in offering a similar service on the real site.
"I began to understand Walter's attraction to this version of eHarmony," he wrote on the company blog. "You're talking to a human being who cares about your success. That's nice. This person is reaching out to you and listening to your feedback. Who wouldn't love that? Your counselor is helping you avoid the pitfalls that are common problems for many people. It's like having a guardian angel!"
The new service was christened eH+ and ideas quickly began flowing. "What if eH+ users were FREE from having to log onto the computer? FREE!" Langston continued. "What if eH+ users could avoid rejection? WHAT?! That's like fat-free bacon. What if eH+ users had a level of privacy virtually unknown in the online dating world?" They may not be things Walter Mitty needed in the film, but they were certainly things that real-life users would love.
And now, when moviegoers leave the theater after seeing The Secret Life of Walter Mitty this winter, they will be able to sign on to eHarmony and receive the same exclusive service as Ben Stiller himself.