Marketing

Wow, there has been a lot of eHarmony news lately. Here is some more dealing with the marketing and media side of the business.

Industry insiders are reporting that eHarmony has reached out to a number of media agencies including Omnicom Group, WPP, Publicis Groupe and Interpublic Group of Cos. It looks like they are shopping around with their rather large marketing account. According to Kantar Media, eHarmony "spent a total of $85.4 million in domestic measured media in 2009".

For more on the story, read Advertising Age. To find out other details about this dating site you can check out our eHarmony review.

The Game Show Network has a new dating TV show called Baggage and it is hosted by none other than Jerry Springer. The show first aired on April 19 and runs weeknights at 6:30pm / 5:30pm central time. Perfectmatch.com is a featured partner of the GSN and will be featured on the show as well. So what is the half hour show Baggage about? It involves 3 contestants and one dater. Jerry Springer coaxes the dater to choose among the others who should reveal their hidden flaws, what people would consider relationship baggage and what most would keep hidden well into a relationship.

Here is Jerry explaining in his own words what his new show is all about:

If you are a fan of the Jerry Springer show (which is in its 19th year by the way and one of the longest running TV shows) you should enjoy Jerry's new show Baggage. For more on this new dating show you can check out the Baggage website on the Game Show Network. For further details about the dating site featured on Baggage you can read our Perfectmatch.com review.

The dating site Plentyoffish.com can now be found in another music video. The first time this happened was for a song called "Available" by Flo Rida last summer (see Story). Now the Lady Gaga video for the song "Telephone" (featuring Beyonce) has Plentyoffish.com being used by one of the women guards in the video.

The dating site is not the only obvious product placement in the video. You will find Lady Gaga getting her Verizon mobile phone confiscated by jail guards and strangley enough, her eating Wonder Bread in the video as well.

You can find the new video LadyGaga.com. Warning the video is a little strange and has sexual content.

It looks like the gay dating site ManCrunch.com took a page from AshleyMadison.com play book. Last year AshleyMadison.com created an ad for the Super Bowl which was rejected by the TV Networks (see Story). They received a lot of free press because of it. This year it must be ManCrunch.com's turn. Here is the TV commercial in question:

While I was in no way offended by the commercial and I did find it comical, the problem is the production values are just not up to the standards for a show like the Super Bowl.

ManCrunch.com spokesman Dominic Friesen told the New York Post that CBS had said all the commercial spots for the Super Bowl were sold. Dominic Friesen felt this was not true and that there were being discriminated against.

BlackPeopleMeet.com is one of the most popular dating sites for African-Americans and they have recently launched a free online magazine for their members. The magazine contains insight, advice and perspectives for Black Singles who need help with love, relationships and dating. Frequent updates are promised for the online magazine and when you visit the site you can expect to find the following content:

• Feature articles focused on dating, love and relationships, and intimacy.
• Expert advice from recognized dating authorities and leading bloggers, such as Twanna Hines, author of the blog “FunkyBrownChick.com.” Readers will be invited to submit questions, with answers provided in the magazine by guest experts.
• Interviews with high profile experts, authors and personalities, ranging from dating coaches to career advisors. In the first issue, featured interviews include ones with Yolanda Shoshana, who leads seduction workshops in New York, as well as Sandra Sea, a career coach who shares tips on making new year resolutions focused on one’s profession.
• Interactive polls, inviting readers to share their opinion on a wide ranging and always changing roster of questions of interest to African-American singles.
• Success stories of real couples who have met through BlackPeopleMeet.com, offering inspiration and heartwarming anecdotes about their triumph in finding a meaningful relationship through the dating site.

For more on the story, read Earth Times. To find out about the dating site, read our review of BlackPeopleMeet.com.

As part of a $250,000 advertising campaign, Ashley Madison wanted to wrap ads on 6 street cars in Toronto, Canada. The ads read "Life is Short, Have an Affair AshleyMadison.com". The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) rejected the ads last Friday, due to the ads violating TTC advertising standards.

The Ashley Madison CEO, Noel Biderman, disagrees with the TTC committee because the ads conform with Canadian laws. He further states that the TTC shouldn't be making morality judgments, they are in business to run transit lines. This also comes at a time when the TTC is in the red financially and, will be hiking user fees in the near future to hopefully cover losses.

I don't think the National Media has caught on to the real Ashley Madison's advertising campaign. Ashley Madison makes their ads just racy enough that they know most established media companies will reject them. They then let it be known that their ads were rejected, and the rest of the media reports on it. This is FREE advertising for them. I counted no less than 3 Toronto newspaper articles on the topic of the Ashley Madison TTC Ads being rejected, plus several mentions on TV during the news hour and discussions on talk radio.

This is a publicity stunt by Ashley Madison and it has become a pattern for them. We saw it earlier this year when a Canadian TV Network (CTV) rejected an Ashley Madison commercial that would have aired during the Super Bowl (see Story). Another example of this pattern is when they offered Tiger Woods $5 Million for an endorsement deal (see Story).