Monday, December 19, 2005

Three Girls for Every Five Boys

I was in NYC recently and I noticed a billboard for the Jewish online dating service JDate in Times Square that struck me as a very atypical dating service advertisement. Check out this link for a picture of the billboard. Incidentally, the aforementioned link is courtesy of the Belligerent Intellectual, a person whom I have never met but frequently posts comments on a blog that I check our on a regular basis (authored by another person I've never met).

The thing I can't figure out about this ad is why does it feature a group of three women and five men, none of whom appear to be romantically involved with anyone else in the ad? I could understand if this was an ad for a social networking website that also offered matchmaking services, but as far as I can tell, JDate is what it claims to be, a dating service for Jewish singles. What kind of reaction are they trying to get out of their target demographic in response to this ad? Maybe the reason they are focusing on a group of people instead of one happy couple is to convey the message that a lot of young Jewish singles are using JDate in order to diffuse any remaining stigma surrounding online dating services. Maybe they are having trouble attracting women to their service and are trying to persuade them to check it out by showing them a surplus of eligible Jewish bachelors. Maybe there is a religious or cultural preference for dating in groups that I am unaware of?

My guess is that I'm reading too much into this ad. It's probably most likely that the ad agency that put this one together used the time-tested rule that you can sell any product if you show people who are hip, young, and attractive using it and appearing to have a good time.

No comments: