May 10

Nice job, chemistry.com peeps!

9:20 pm Category: archives

So my sister just told me about these commercials for an online dating site called Chemistry.com. I’ve talked to several people who tried the eHarmony.com personality profile thing and then, many many many questions later, got the “We’re sorry, but we are unable to match you with anyone at this time” message and wouldn’t let them join.

There are many theories on why this is so: that they have a bias against anyone who doesn’t specify a religion, that they won’t take you if you’re gay, that if you mark yourself as not being interested in children they shut you out… etc. I mean, after all, the dude who’s their founder (Dr. Neil Clark Warren) is an evangelical Christian and gives credit for their success to regular features on the Focus on the Family radio show. They’re all about the family values over there.

SO… this other dating service — in a stroke of genius, I must say — built their advertising campaign around that. It’s the “Rejected by eHarmony” ad campaign and I found several of them on YouTube. They’re pretty well done, I think, so here they are:

First, the “it’s because you’re gay” theory:

Next, the “if you are anything less than ecstatic all the time, you are a miserable wretch and don’t deserve a relationship theory”:

Last, the frustration of the post-free personality profile rejection:

There are two or three more: the “Dear John Letter”, the “I’m a Good Person” so check them out if you feel like it. I just think this is a terribly good example of leveraging a major shortcoming of a competitor and engendering customer loyalty from the get-go (the eHarmony rejects can rally together!)

This doesn’t mean I will be signing up; but it does mean that they have my respect and if I ever decide to try something like this, I will seriously consider them. But that’s a mighty big “IF”.

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