I love finding religion stories in the sports pages and business pages of the newspaper. New York Times’ reporter Douglas Quenqua had a great one this week about religious values and internet dating.
Not too long ago I began seeing television commercials by Chemistry.com attacking the internet dating site eHarmony. The advertisements complain that eHarmony screens out people who aren’t happy enough or whose morals are considered suspect. I would love to know how well that campaign is working because it seemed to me that in the murky world of internet dating, a bit of a litmus test might not turn customers away. Quenqua’s story looks at the ad campaign’s results as well as the transition of the ad campaign to print venues.
The online dating service Chemistry.com plans to unleash a new campaign that seeks to depict its older and larger competitor, eHarmony.com, as out of touch with mainstream American values. The ads, which will appear in weekly newspapers and magazines starting Monday, attack eHarmony for refusing to match people of the same gender and for the evangelical Christian beliefs of its founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren.
It is not the first time that Chemistry.com has hit on this theme. In April, the service ran a set of ads called “Rejected by eHarmony” featuring people who were turned away from eHarmony for being gay, not happy enough or simply unmatchable by its system. Chemistry.com spent $20 million on that campaign, and the company plans to increase the budget for this new effort.
Although Chemistry.com has 3.7 million registered users, in contrast to eHarmony’s 17 million, the “Rejected by eHarmony” campaign may be working. Since it was introduced, Chemistry.com has experienced an 80 percent growth rate, said Mandy Ginsburg, general manager of Chemistry.com. She said that enrollments by gays and lesbians have risen 200 percent since the “Rejected” campaign started, and that 10 percent of Chemistry.com’s members are seeking a same-sex match.
I have two friends who married after meeting on Match.com, which is Chemistry.com’s parent company. At least one of them chose Match over eHarmony precisely because they didn’t want to use a service which wouldn’t cater to homosexuals. I thought Quenqua looked at this story with a nice objective stance, letting facts and figures speak for themselves while also letting company spokesmen explain their philosophy.
Jody Petrie, an eHarmony spokeswoman, said the companies are fundamentally different. EHarmony markets itself as helping people find successful long-term relationships rather than people to date:
EHarmony, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., and was founded in 2000 by Dr. Warren, a clinical psychologist, has long been criticized for its practice of turning away applicants who are gay or lesbian, married or serially divorced. Dr. Warren, a former seminary student who has had several books published by Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian group, has publicly voiced his belief that premarital sex can increase the likelihood of one’s marrying the wrong person.
Ms. Petrie said that eHarmony took no position on premarital sex and had no affiliation with any religion. As for its reason for not offering services to gays or lesbians, she said: “EHarmony’s matching system is based on psychological data collected from heterosexual married couples, and we have not offered a service for those seeking same-sex matches. Nothing precludes us from offering a same-sex service in the future, but it’s not a service we offer now.”
Quinqua explains that Chemistry.com is betting that enough consumers will prefer a company that reflects their values. Their campaign features, among other vignettes, a motel sign declaring “No premarital sex.” The copy then explains that the company does not judge any moral code for its members. The reporter explains the company’s approach of attacking eHarmony in great detail as well as eHarmony’s contention that the advertising is inaccurate and negative and that Chemistry.com would be better served by improving its own product.
All in all, a nice straightforward business story.
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Comments (5) |
December 30, 2007, at 10:35 pm
Back up there a minute, Patsy.
“EHarmony…has long been criticized for its practice of turning away applicants who are…married.”
What the fluff? They’re criticized for not catering to the doubtless growing adulterers’ market out there? I should blinkin’ well hope they turn away married applicants!
And why don’t Chemistry.com just run ads saying “Catering for LGBT singles”? Or, I suppose, if they don’t want to be criticized “Catering for LGBT singles/partnered/live-ins/we don’t care, we’ll take anyone’s money”?
I have a funny feeling this has less to do with values and morals, and more to do with blacking the eye of a competitor and making a name for themselves.
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December 31, 2007, at 4:26 am
Interesting. My wife and I found each other the old fashioned way: The Salon.com personal ads.
But as for the story, if I was a reporter working on this story I would have talked to a lawyer to find out if Chemistry.com or the people who respond to ads placed by married people might face lawsuits for alienation of affection.
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December 31, 2007, at 1:27 pm
Sorry, but it’s not that straightforward.
So, what are “mainstream American values”, according to this straightforward business story in the NY Times?
Does the story cite any evidence that eHarmony’s practices do not reflect “mainstream American values”? No. Another undefined term is “happy”, as in “people who were turned away from eHarmony for being…not happy enough”. Odd.
The Chemistry.com approach is Marketing 101: segment the market and go after an attractive segment that your primary competitor is not serving well (or at all). The ads are clever, to the point, and in support of the approach. A “nice straightforward business story” would have focused on the marketing strategy and execution and avoided:
* Terms such as “mainstream American values”
* Leading with “the evangelical Christian beliefs” of the eHarmony founder
To his credit, the author allows eHarmony to:
* Clarify that the founder’s beliefs do not determine the practices of the eHarmony business
* Explain how the eHarmony system works
* State that eHarmony is not opposed to a matching service for gays.
The whole discussion of “values” is portrayed as a tactic of Chemistry.com, but you have to read pretty far to glean that. This leaves me with the sense that the author shares the values of Chemistry.com. With a few tweaks, this could have been a much better, and more straightforward, story.
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December 31, 2007, at 6:32 pm
Though in a funny sense, there is a religion ghost here. That “Rejected by Eharmony” thing reminds me of the Unitarian church ads - remember? the ones with the bouncers turning away potential congregants as ‘we don’t want your type around here’ and the ejector seats in the pews?
Ripping off a successful(? was it successful for the Unitarians?) ad campaign from a religious to a commerical basis - that’s an unmentioned religious angle there.
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January 1, 2008, at 5:06 pm
Martha,
FYI … the “bouncer church” ads were from the United Churches of Christ rather than the Unitarian Church. (Although I’ve heard it said that “UCC” actually might stand for “Unitarians Considering Christ.”)
From my UCC clergy friends, the ads weren’t particularly helpful. Even those whose beliefs were depicted in the ads saw them as unnecessarily controversial during a time that the church is already dealing with many controversies. And attendance at UCC churches did not increase.
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