HOME / ad report card: Advertising deconstructed.

The Online Dating Site for RejectsAre those Chemistry.com ads working?

By Seth StevensonPosted Monday, July 2, 2007, at 6:45 AM ET

The Spot: A man is flipping through a nudie magazine. He opens up to a photo spread, takes a good long leer, and then closes the magazine and shrugs. "Nope," he says. "Still gay." A big red stamp slams across his face, reading: "Rejected by eHarmony." The announcer says, "Who knows why eHarmony has rejected over 1 million people looking for love? But at Chemistry.com you can come as you are." (Click here to watch ads from the Chemistry.com campaign.)

RSS

The dating Web site eHarmony has a heteros-only policy, and lately it's been catching a lot of flak for that. A gay California woman filed a lawsuit last month accusing eHarmony of discrimination. Adding fuel to the fire: eHarmony's founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, is an evangelical Christian, and his background includes close ties to the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family.

Ad Report Card reader K.P. e-mails: "As a gay man, I am outraged at eHarmony's refusal to allow guys who like guys or girls who like girls to post ads on their site. I recently was watching NBC during a sporting event on a Saturday afternoon and saw the ad for Chemistry.com. It stopped me dead in my tracks and made me so happy that I laughed out loud."

The Chemistry.com campaign had the opposite effect on eHarmony—so much so that, according to the Washington Post, eHarmony's legal counsel tried to get the ads altered or taken off NBC. Dr. Warren himself has defended eHarmony with a couple of different arguments, laid out in an interview on NPR's Fresh Air: 1) He says eHarmony's partner-matching algorithms have been derived through studying successful straight marriages. Having done no studies on how to identify good gay matches, eHarmony declines to even take a stab at it. 2) He says eHarmony's goal is creating marriages, and since same-sex marriage is "largely illegal" that's an "issue for us."

I call complete bullpoo on both these rationales. Healthy long-haul relationships look the same all over the world, and all over the demographic map. If Warren needs to see more data before he accepts that, he should go out and gather it. There's no shortage of happy gay couples to study. And the financial incentive is obviously there—so what's stopping him?

With regard to the marriage issue: Dating sites don't perform wedding ceremonies. The product on offer here is love. If a couple subsequently wants some sort of state-sanctioned union, or not, that's the couple's business. (And a gay couple can always move to Massachusetts if marriage is a must.)

As for Chemistry.com, if K.P.'s reaction is any guide, the company has a winning pitch. Perhaps it can even corner the market on gay online dating through the appeal of this gay-friendly spot. My hunch is that's a lucrative niche. As K.P. puts it: "I mean we date … a lot. In fact, I think it's fair to say that gay men were the trailblazers of the online dating game."

So the "Nope, still gay" ad is great. But let's set it aside for the moment. What about the other ads in Chemistry.com's current campaign—the ones targeted at straight guys and gals? Apparently, lots of people answer eHarmony's long list of personality questions only to reach a screen that says, "Unable to match you at this time," with no further explanation. According to USA Today, eHarmony rejects 16 percent of applicants because they're "poor marriage prospects." The pitch to these folks isn't that eHarmony has ruled them out categorically, as it has with gays. The pitch is that Chemistry.com will welcome their business, even if they didn't make the grade at eHarmony.

These hetero-targeted ads show pleasant-looking people wondering why eHarmony negged them. They seem to doubt their own self-worth. "I am a good person, right?" anguishes a woman in one ad who's gotten the eHarmony stiff-arm. "Can't a girl get some love?" pleads a woman in another spot.

This strategy might woo people who have actually attempted to sign up for eHarmony and been rejected. But those who are entirely new to the online dating scene might be put off. If I were single and choosing which dating site to try, I don't think an open-floodgates admissions policy would be a key selling point. I'd demand a little screening and selectivity. The ad campaign conveys just the opposite.

Rejected by eHarmony. What's more, the people in the ads come off as insecure, damaged goods. Frankly, I wouldn't want them in my dating pool. Especially not that woman wearing a mini-vest over a scoop-neck top. Lady, your first step to getting a date is ditching that unfortunate ensemble. Grade: A for the gay-themed ad, C- for the others.

Housekeeping item: In a recent Ad Report Card about vitaminwater, I said that Gatorade would never use a nonathlete celebrity in its ads. Several readers pointed out that rapper L.L. Cool J appeared in a Gatorade ad in 2004. True! Mama said knock me out! In my defense, three years is a lifetime when it comes to brand image. I still don't think the Gatorade of 2007 would feature a nonsports celebrity in an ad. (Now watch Elton John show up in a new Gatorade campaign next week.)

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Seth Stevenson is a frequent contributor to Slate.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

I guess just how inconsistent Seth Stevenson is being in his review of the Chemistry.com ads depends on whether or not he is gay.

The reason I say that is because he thinks the gay-focus ads are great because he can understand how discrimination from eHarmony is unfair and that gay people are a market segment that needs to be addressed. If he isn't gay, then he's being very sympathetic towards sensibilities he doesn't really share.

But then there's the sensibilities of the people whose tastes and non-sexual orientations differ from his own. Evidently he can't quite get his head around the idea that even people who dress in a way he finds distasteful might just want to find a match too.

So if Stevenson is gay, then he's inconsistent in that his sensibilities only extend to his own group (How dare eHarmony reject gay people, but lord, how tacky is that vest?!?! ) If he's straight but a fashion prig then he's being inconsistent because he can see how other viewpoints are valid market shares but only if they're based on sexual orientation.

--Gilker

(To reply, click here.)

[eHarmony is engaged in] false advertising. They cast a wide net but only want to sell to a small group. They acquire a lot of data on individuals BEFORE telling them they wont be getting the product.

If sears said they sell lawnmowers and you gave them all your stats and your VISA card info you would expect a lawnmower. If they then call and say they only sell Lawnmowers to landscapers AFTER taking all your data, I would be offended. How about you?

--RMLReturns

(To reply, click here.)

I've seen the ads a few times and I guess I wasn't paying attention, but my husband and I actually thought that they were ads for Eharmony- as in, "Come to us because we are selective, and you will meet good people." I'm still not sure that that interpretation doesn't work.

For example, in the gay man ad (which made me laugh out loud), the rejected man didn't seem like a very good prospect for anyone, because he's questioning his sexuality. Nobody wants to be with someone who might change teams mid-relationship, gay or straight. As a straight woman, (if I were single) I would certainly want to avoid him, and I thought that Eharmony was trying to say that they would help me do just that.

--mchichi

(To reply, click here.)

If Chemistry wanted to be really cynical about eHarmony's business practices, they could simply build an ad campaign around the idea that Dr. Warren isn't interested in the success of his clients - but in his own success as a matchmaker. Since his goal is to create as many married couples as possible, anyone who isn't a good candidate for that is turned away. Therefore, he keeps his numbers high by picking the low-hanging fruit.

The Chemistry adds would be more effective, and more universally appealing, if they made more forcefully the point that eHarmony attacked romantic notions through quietly weeding out all but the chosen few. What good does it do you to look to a site that professes to help you to find someone who loves you for "who you are," if the site's algorithm is going to be the one who determines if "who you are" is worthy of love? A good focus would be on couples that are happy together that eHarmony would have weeded out from the get-go. It would take a little work on Chemistry's part, but it could be done. Happy couples actually rejected by eHarmony would be better, but could be trickier to set up.

--Lyger

(To reply, click here.)

I joined eHarmony in the early days, before I learned about the company's questionable policies. I was never thrilled with the matches they proposed for me, but I was completely dumbfounded when one of the matches confessed to me that he had recently ended what he termed a "gay phase" and was looking for a woman to help him put his past behind him.

After toying with the idea of meeting up with this guy so I could introduce him to some of my gay friends for a timely intervention, I instead cancelled my membership along with a scathing letter to their customer service. My problem isn't that they matched me with this guy, but that they obviously support the idea of homosexuality being a curable disease.

Considering how 'thorough' their personality profile is, and the fact that they reject people for admitting things like depression it seems clear to me they must actively accept "formerly gay" people. That, to me, is more upsetting than them rejecting gays up front. At least they're honest about that unacceptable bigotry.

--katidid0913

(To reply, click here.)

(7/6)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES