(Online Dating Industry Journal) In the summer of 2005, a new online dating service - engage.com - opened with little fanfare. Since that time, the dating service has struggled to climb the ladder of top online dating services. Three reasons of this failure early on include:
1. The concept of the dating service - involving friends in the dating process.
2. Turning down some interview requests early on.
3. Lack of publicity concepts, ideas, and action.
In 2008, all of that has changed. Engage.com has launched a PR strategy that is now heaping publicity on a service that looked good on paper for years, but did little to generate interest from the public. On Valentine's Day, the staff of Engage.com went to the Montgomery BART station in San Francisco where they handed roses to commuters, took Polaroid pictures of them, and had a musician serenade them. Attached to the roses was a "business card" promoting Engage.com.
The move brought lots of great publicity for Engage.com, and even one negative article. A San Francisco Weekly columnist wrote a negative article about the event that Engage.com's Trish McDermott took the time to respond to (see the Comments section).
It seems that Engage.com has finally come to life in 2008 (publicity functions, blog interaction with readers, research reports, and more interviews). It's a move that might finally propel the service to a higher standing with online daters.
Joe's Comments
Even with the one negative article, doing an event like this was a smart move on the part of Engage.com. I personally have not been that impressed with Engage.com since it's launch. I don't think its "meet new people through people you already know" is very engaging in finding love online. It requires more than one person to do a lot of work to help you succeed at love. The concept isn't revolutionary as we already have a ton of social networking sites. And finally, Engage.com was spending too much time early on being selective about interviews they would grant, that they turned down some nice opportunities to spread the word about their service.
But Engage.com is now growing on me with their effort to engage the public in publicity efforts that bring cheer to people on the streets and news blurbs to a service that needs the attention. In addition, Engage.com is now putting out an annual "State of the Date Report" which examines attitudes of singles when it comes to dating. So I commend Engage.com for finally coming out of its cave and doing a great job engaging singles, the media, and its members.
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