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Posted by Rebekah Asquith on 19/04/2016

A perfectly imperfect engagement strategy?

A perfectly imperfect engagement strategy?

‘If you don’t like your imperfections, someone else will.’ A statement that would reassure even the most insecure singleton. Personally, I think this is a great idea and concept for a campaign from a dating company and I would be proud to have come up with this idea. The thing is, a light-bulb moment that leads to a great idea, when given half the chance can also crumble in a moment if executed wrongly. Exhibit A: The newest development of the ‘Love Your Imperfections’ campaign from Match.com.

match-freckles

The campaign has spanned across posters, social media and television adverts in the past, but the latest instalment was the underground posters that seem to have caused outrage among London tube travellers. The digital visuals included in these latest posters is the first time that Match.com have focused on physical appearance in this campaign and its had a terrible reception from the public. Previously the adverts focused on habits such as snorting while laughing and personality traits like clumsiness which are relatable and a lot less personal. The Advertising Standards Agency has received over a dozen complaints about the freckles advert and another showing a man with different coloured eyes and are in the process of assessing the situation to see if there are grounds for investigation.

There are a variety of the adverts, focusing on different ‘imperfections’ but it seems that none of them have been very well received and have even been identified as ‘the lowest form of advertising’ by some. There has been a lot of social media backlash centred around the advert featuring ‘Mark’ that portrayed him as quite the unlovable character. A spokesperson for Match.com said that while Mark is an actor, his imperfection is clumsiness and in this case, it causes him to forget to have his train card ready to swipe through the tube barriers – something that was meant to relate to many London underground travellers. Meant to.

Match.com say that the focus of the ‘Love Your Imperfections’ campaign is to focus on the quirks that people wrongly perceive to be imperfections, including freckles, a feature that is sometimes seen as imperfect by people who have them. #LoveYourImperfections is the social media handle shown throughout the campaign suggesting the innocence and thought behind its and encouraging shareability. They claim that they were never meant offend and responded to this social media activity on Twitter by apologising and saying that they wanted to celebrate what made people beautiful and unique. Match.com then released a new set of ‘less offensive tube posters’ that they say nobody can possibly be angry about.

A day after the company apologised on Twitter, they then made another announcement telling the public that after careful consideration they had decided to remove the adverts, highlighting that their intention wasn’t to offend. However, they also stated ‘Our adverts are intended to spark debate and we’re glad to see that Mark’s one has done that’. This statement begs the question, was this the case with the the other adverts including the freckles one? Is it worth offending the general public and your target audience just to try and spark a debate among people? The answer is obviously no, and your public relations department should have advised you against this. Making out that you are doing the right thing and trying to seem caring has never faired well in past PR campaigns.

From an onlookers perspective, I think the clarification of the campaign’s intention to celebrate imperfections makes the campaign seem quite innocent and even endearing – the sentiment behind it is clever, sensitive and well suited to the company and the customers. But with the admission that the adverts are actually intended to spark debate, it seems that the thinking behind the campaign is actually much more than meets the eye and the intentions here conflict each other. No successful campaign has ever involved conflicting ideas or angles, in order to achieve what would seem to be the desired effect. However, if what Match.com really wanted was to spark debate and encourage people to talk about the adverts and engage with the campaign then this has been a success. Having this intention surely questions the sincerity of this campaign in the first place and their intentions as an organisation. Do they really want to help people be more confident about their ‘imperfections’ and help them find love? Or do they really only want to generate publicity for their website and encourage conversation and debate?

As I said before, I think that the message behind the campaign is a great idea, it is unfortunately the digital effects that ruined the campaign and managed to turn the public against it. This is sadly where Match.com’s digital engagement strategy has faltered.

I don’t think that this campaign could have backfired more and this shows the importance of a thorough digital engagement plan, strategy and tactics. The thought was nice Match.com, but I’d recommend a bit more strategic planning next time. But if the goal of this campaign was the get people talking about it, then congratulations, you’ve done it! And as they say, theres no such thing as bad press.

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