I’ve been wondering for years about online dating site eHarmony.com and its policy of not accepting LGBT members. From a communications perspective, eHarmony let it be known from the very beginning that the LGBT audience should look elsewhere for love. However, it looks like the dating site is attempting to change its tune… errr, love song (Mama Cass’ It’s Getting Better, perhaps?). According to the Wikipedia page for eHarmony’s evangelical Christian founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren:
"Warren attributes much of eHarmony’s initial success to its promotion on the daily radio broadcast of Focus on the Family. eHarmony has recently parted ways with Focus on the Family in an effort to widen its market share and appeal."
CONVENIENT, NO?
While there are already a number of LGBT-specific online dating sites as well as general online dating sites that accept LGBT members, including sites like Yahoo Personals, a new competitor is capitalizing on eHarmony’s message of rejection to the LGBT community.
Match.com is teaching eHarmony a lesson… a lesson in Chemistry. The already well-known dating site is confronting eHarmony head on with a new spin-off dating site, www.chemistry.com . A $10 million ad campaign entitled "Come As You Are" was launched on April 30, 2007 to support the launch of Chemistry.com and heavily satirizes eHarmony’s "exclusionary" nature. The commercials for the new site are very humorous and well-executed.
eHarmony.com became popular with heterosexual singles because of its status as the first dating site to utilize a free, comprehensive "Personality Profile" to match couples. The site’s defining personality test was developed by Dr. Warren.
On a personal note, I’ve always been a huge fan of Myers-Briggs personality tests in helping individuals to learn more about themselves and their relationships with other people, both personally and professionally. When I first joined Fleishman-Hillard, our entire Washington, DC office went through an extensive, two-day Myers-Briggs "boot camp" which taught us about the similarities and differences in our individual working styles. I found it extremely beneficial.
If you want to try a quickie online version of the personality test, click here…I’ve had good luck with this online version yielding the same results as the more in-depth version I took during our office exercise. But I digress…
I must admit that I thought eHarmony.com was onto something really great until I learned that the LGBT community would be excluded from it. I’m confident I would have purchased the service had it been available to me at the time.
Chemistry.com, similar to eHarmony.com, uses an online personality test to segment members into four major categories: "explorers,” “builders,” “directors,” and “negotiators.” The Chemistry.com personality survey also asks users other questions — including measuring the length of their index and ring fingers — to measure physical characteristics which are indicators of brain chemical levels like dopamine, testosterone, and estrogen. After taking the personality survey, Chemistry.com users are given compatibility quotients based on the above-mentioned personality types.
Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, who has published research and books on relationship issues, developed Chemistry.com’s personality test and is featured prominently on the site’s homepage.
Chemistry.com also includes a blog with a fantastic line up of contributors, including Dr. Fisher and renowned relationship and sex advice columnist, Dan Savage.
It sounds like eHarmony might want to head back into the lab and re-examine the elements of its communications equation. The service just may discover that a message of acceptance creates a positive reaction that will improve both market share and the bottom line.
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Yeah, I wouldn’t ever use eHarmony after years of them rejecting gays and lesbians. I’ll stick with one of the many other sites that didn’t go out of its way to say I don’t matter.
In interviews with eHarmony’s founder, I’ve heard him say that the reason they haven’t accepted LGBT customers is that their methodology is based on their research into what makes heterosexual marriages work, and that they had no confidence that it would apply to same-sex couples. I actually think that’s quite reasonable… though of course, it might be a dodge to cover a basic discomfort with gay couples.
Their “broadening the market” doesn’t necessarily suggest interest in the GLBT market; I expect that there are lots of straight people who found their closeness with Focus on the Family pretty creepy.
chemistry.com would be even better if it allowed users to say if they are interested in both men and women.