DigitalBulletin, part of Brand Republic, has a strategy analysis for the Match.com UK reality show.

My ears perked up until I read this:

The idea was to take Match.com to people by allowing them to interact with the brand, not just each other.

Ugh, who let the markers in the room? Don’t I always say that people don’t date on dating sites? They are introduction billboards, so what’s with interacting with the brand? NOBODY wants to align themselves with a dating site. We’re not talking about a lifestyle brand link Mercedes or Volkswagon.

TV: The climax of the idea gave one male and one female Match.com member the chance to find love through Match.com, and appear live on peaktime TV. Three consecutive solus breaks in Love Island were secured on 6 August. The ads were shot immediately before transmission, in front of a live studio audience, and then transmitted “as live”. The first saw the host introduce the lucky winners, the second gave the winning man the opportunity to sell himself, and the third saw the winning woman’s turn.

Online: Before TV activity, contestants uploaded videos to a special “Live Love” Match.com microsite, comprising a 30-second pitch describing why they shouldn’t be single. Other Match.com users then judged the entries, with two winners going forward to the final TV stage.

The day after the live ads aired was the highest month for subscriptions in Match.com’s history, and was 3.5 per cent higher than the best-performing month for the year (what month was that?).

Google searches that day led to the highest number of new subscriptions in the history of Match.com’s relationship with the search engine, and these have continued to increase since. MSN has also seen a 23 per cent increase in registrations and a 39 per cent rise in subscriptions.

Not bad results, indeed. Steve Hobbs, head of planning and integration, Carat, gives the verdict. Worth reading.

However, the thinking behind this activity seems a bit more old-fashioned than that. In the past, Match.com has run awareness-building activity on TV, radio and outdoor. Though this work is executionally very different, on face value it’s difficult to see how it achieves much more.

The campaign successfully delivers on its objective of taking Match.com to people and explaining its services, with well-executed ideas. But it is unclear whether the work was founded on the consumer insight that a social stigma remains attached to online dating, or whether many still believe people do not represent themselves in a virtual world as they are in the real world.

This is a great idea, similar to Comcast’s singles channel. But really, I can see this being an enormous YouTube competition next. You don’t need a television or to pay for a specific dating site. Perfect for a brand aligned with being single that’s not necessarily in the dating space.

Get rid of HRP, M2M Cherish PR and some company called Monkey. Four companies is three to many to promote the show. Do it for cheap on the net and promote through your marketing agency and go viral with teaser videos. Let that bleed over to mainstream media, who will provide all the coverage you need for free.

Have separate categories for men, women, gay straight, younger, older and whatever else makes sense. That could be a great exercise.

Kudos for Match for pulling this off. Expect to see more web-based versions of this soon.

Related posts:

1. Match Introduces Live Video
2. Match Live chat August 25th
3. Match seeking Director of Strategy & Planning

Userplane is in the dog house. Popular pet destinations Dogster and Catster are rolling out Userplane’s real-time, one-to-one instant messaging and audio/video chat. Fido and Spot have entered the internet age.

The Dogster and Catster IM player is highly customized to solve a unique challenge: namely, that one user often has several profiles. Each profile uses a particular pet’s name, along with the pet’s photo, as the avatar. Owners of multiple pets usually create separate profiles for each pet. Dogster and Catster designed the IM functionality so that each pet – not each owner – could initiate conversations.

I can barely get my parents to hook up a video-camera and pets are already video-chatting online. Reminds me of the Dutch primate dating service that launched recently. I’m still waiting for the press release announcing a new test that covers 29 dimensions of primate compatibility.

I remember watching a nature documentary on tigers when I was a kid, and the family cat went crazy jumping around and pawing at the screen whenever he saw a tiger. Catster members are sure to be treated to entertaining situations where their cats are walking all over the keyboard while they chat with their feline counterparts.

Make no bones about it, this partnership really purrs.

Technorati Tags: chat, instant+messaging

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Paltalk, the Internet’s largest Video Chat community with more than four million active members, announced today launched Paltalk People 2.0.

Paltalk says it’s the only social networking site in the world that allows users to communicate through video, voice and text chat. This is totally false. I’ve been videoconferencing since 1994 and have used every program out there. I used PalTalk a few years ago and I have a hard time believing it has four million active members. Back then there were less than a thousand people on the site at any one time.

In the plus column, PalTalk was the first company to combine video and voice communication with an online buddy list. Way ahead of everyone else.

The question becomes why isn’t PalTalk as popular as Skype or Userplane?

I’ll tell you why. Product positioning, marketing and management. PalTalk always looked clumsy, like Windows 3.1 and the video windows were tiny. It was never marketed well enough in the MSM (main stream media). Management of PalTalk and their competitors like ICUII and ISPQ didn’t think big enough, hence glacial user growth. Most of the users never wore clothing. This doesn’t add up to a high-growth enterprise.

The new message behind PalTalk is the ability to marry networked user profiles with a unique messenger that also gives users the ability to see and speak both one-to-one or to thousands of people simultaneously.

Maybe PalTalk has a renewed energy to take on social networking. It certainly has the feature set in place. I’m just not feeling it at the moment.

I went to buy the program and it asked me to log into my account, so I can’t even tell you how much it costs. And it’s PC only. I think most people would agree it’s easier to video-flirt on Skype or a similar program for free.

Technorati Tags: paltalk, video dating, videoconferencing

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According to Marketing VOX, Google Video has been updated. Still not up to par with YouTube but getting better.

Google, which provided a special site for video-makers with many titles to upload, is promoting the new video service via a program that coincides with “National Break-Up Day,” June 2, and the release of the film “The Break Up,” starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn.

Google is asking people to upload their break-up videos, which I believe is going to result in either very sad or hilarious viewing.

Technorati Tags: brea

Related posts:

1. National Break-Up Season Has Arrived
2. Google Romance
3. Woome Promotes Bands, Privacy Issues?

Rafat @ PaidContent tells us that FIM president Ross Levinsohn said video uploads on MySpace surpassed YouTube in a matter of days. YouTube visits are still longer at 15 minutes. Bill Tancer at Hitwise says that 25% of YouTube’s traffic was coming from Myspace while Nielsen says the number was 2%.

Technorati Tags: myspace, youtube

Related posts:

1. Is your Dating Site on Myspace and Youtube?
2. When MySpace Away, Adult, Dating Sites Get Better Play
3. YouTube Spammers