Marketing Strategy Gone Awry For One On-Line Dating Site
Targeted Advertising Misses Its Target
Match.com really wants me. Every time I exit Facebook about a dozen handsome faces stare at me with those come-hither looks asking me to take them home. These are the same faces I have seen staring at me for years. What is wrong with you Trevor7878 that you cannot find suitable female companionship? Hell, you’re handsome, you look relatively intelligent, and you have a clean expensive shirt on. So where are you going wrong? Do you smell bad? Do you have turrets? Are there 50 women chained up in your basement wondering how they could be drawn in by your sweet boyish charms? And what's your story Snowstar23? You look like fun and well, let’s be honest…with the choices out there in the real world all of you look like winners. Real winners... trim and well groomed…no sweat suits or dirty baseball caps…sometimes a touch of facial hair but well planned facial hair not the kind that is simply cascading out of your ears and nostrils. You all have the fabulous smiles that speak of fortunes left with the orthodontist. I’m pretty sure that those of you with your mouths closed aren’t hiding loose toothless gums or sporadic teeth either. We’re seeing the pick of the crop here to lure us into the abyss of desperados.
Match.com also seems to know how old I am. All the choices they give me are obviously over 40 and these can’t be the same ones that younger women are getting. If younger women were looking for older men online they would go on seekingmillionaire.com or sugardaddy.com – yes, these sites not only exists but were featured on network talk shows more than once. Facebook doesn’t know how old I am, how do you? I don’t put my birth year on Facebook because I want to try to fool people into believing I’m 23 but lived a rough drug addled existence that makes me look way way older.
Furthermore, if they can figure out my age from Facebook why don’t they know that my marital status changed? I did announce that on Facebook. What kind of woman do you think I am? Do you expect me to cheat on my husband? I believe that would put me into the, “married but looking for discrete liaison” category. Yes, there is such a category. Just because I am not interested now does not mean that I didn’t peruse the dating sites in the past. On a slow night I used to do what I called Man Shopping… never really buying but checking out my options. A few times I connected with various men. I’ve had my share of interesting coffee dates culminating in a variety of groping and or disappointment on both of our parts.
One in particular stands out. I always had the ability to pick out the…shall we say, eclectic individuals who sounded like they were creative and deep thinkers. One time I spoke with someone we’ll call Ted. He wrote poetry and was into whole foods. He cooked and kept a compost heap in his back yard. He quoted interesting song lyrics and laughed at my jokes. He claimed to be a motivational speaker. We decided to meet for the first time and I was hopeful. That is until he told me how I would recognize him. “I’ll be the one dressed in all purple with the hair down to my waist.” This did not deter me and only made me more curious about this free range chicken loving poet who motivates people to what… desert their hairdressers? We met at Goat Island in Niagara Falls in the far parking lot. He wasn’t kidding. He had on a purple tee-shirt, purple shorts, purple socks, and purple sneakers. His hair was long and straight but very clean. When I got out of the car he ran over to me, looked at the French braid in my own long hair, clapped his hands and asked if I could braid his hair too. Why not? We sat on a rock in the rapids and I braided his hair. We talked about poetry and recipes for barley. I looked into my soul and felt I was judging him too harshly on the personal style issue. He never called me again and had his number changed. I guess I was too weird for him.
This is not the only time I was dumped by a whack job. Another time I found a scientist who lived in another state. He had issues that came out while we were talking on the phone but he seemed to sincerely want a deep lasting relationship. He told me he had favored younger women and since he was a professor he came in contact with them all the time. Due to his intelligence and the fact that professors, like rock stars, are set apart, they become more attractive. Sure, rock stars are on stage strutting their spandex packages while professors are standing behind a lectern strutting their superior intellects but it boils down to the same thing. Separate one person from the crowd…even bartenders who are set off by the oak and brass…and they become the focal point of the room and by virtue of this are irresistible. Poindexter (not his real name unfortunately) wanted to change the patterns of his life and find a woman closer to his age who shared his affection for Meta philosophy and art. We exchanged photos and he was excited to meet me. His photo looked surprisingly like Ted from the Purple Period of my online dating. He included his paintings as background for his photos and this too intrigued me. Once again, I was putting aside my antipathy to his physical appearance in exchange for the interesting mind. He sent me plane tickets to go to Minneapolis with the understanding that we would not engage in any physical contact. This was just a get acquainted and see what the close personal friends thought of me. Once again, why not? I went to meet him and we spent a pleasant platonic weekend going to flea markets and eating Wisconsin cheddar cheese that we bought at a farm right over the border. Really, I liked his mind and the way he related to his friends but my relationship monitor was not beeping. However, I was willing to let him grow on me. When I got home there was an email from him telling me that he had shaved his head and moved into his basement. He decided to become a Buddhist monk. This is the point where I gave up online dating.
So Match.com you can spend your advertising dollars elsewhere. I’m sure that someone freshly divorced or in the “married but looking for a discrete liaison” category will pick out Trevor7878 from the pack of delightful prospects and find out just why he can’t hang on to a woman. As for me, I found my man the old fashioned way. He was the one listening to all my crazy dating stories while I looked past him to the internet. Funny what we miss when we’re all tied up with technology.