Our client came to us for help in driving a change in brand perception, to build trust with our 18-34 YOA target group and drive new memberships.  ‘’Meetic Group’’ operates a collection of 8 online dating sites in Europe, they are the preferred and most recommended brand and European Leader present in 15 countries covering 13 languages. In 2018 their billings amounted to an estimated 190€ million gross in Europe. We service their brand in 9 European countries.  Its most successful brands include some of the industry’s most well-known services such as Match in the UK, MEETIC in France and LEXA in the Netherlands, our case study will focus on these 3 markets and these 3 apps.

The meaningfulness of these brands and their unique strength is their commitment to real love, their apps really focus on giving daters the opportunity to form meaningful connections, These brands are a reliable expert, one who understand singles and shows empathy.

Nevertheless, these where being shunned by younger crowds who perceived these platforms as one their parents would use, less relevant, less cool and flaky.  But they understood that if this situation continued, they would simply disappear from the app dating scene, or worst: they would consolidate their image of a dating app for Mom, Dad, and grandparents…

To change brand perception, attract younger users and increase new memberships among our target group age, we needed to go way beyond incentives, promotions and add-ons – We looked at our audience in those 3 countries, and stripping away anything to do with cultural specificities, we identified one common insight: whether you live in France, UK or The Netherlands, Seriousness & Meaningful Dating is the new Sexy. Commitment is the true value of our time, but the problem:

Nobody dares to talk about love anymore.

And the new apps that have led dating into the gamification game do not help, it has made finding genuine and serious relationships more difficult for people. This is leading to dating fatigue and mistrust of dating services.  This situation gives us a unique opportunity for the brand to rejuvenate its vision of commitment and in the process, change the brands perception.

We called our Creative Solution: Keep on Rehumanizing Digital Relationships.  Our aim for all 3 markets was to build media experiences that create real genuine connections with people that truly matter, by speaking honestly in a lighthearted way, with authentic content of compelling real-life experiences on the most trusted

media and with the most authentic brand advocates, in short: we offered a human centric approach to deliver meaningful performance.

More specifically, we identified 3 jobs to be done,

Make all 3 brands:

1. the best place to start a meaningful dating journey.
2. more relevant in people’s life to drive interest (drive conviction)
3. more desirable for younger generations and women.

In France we took a humoristic approach and developed a content strategy around the idea that wanting a serious relationship is a valid desire, but you mustn’t take yourself too seriously.

In The Netherlands we took a pedagogical route and tweaked our targeting attract mostly women. Our content was based on 3 documentaries where a famous female Dutch Journalist explored the world of online dating & love.

And in the UK, we also mainly targeted women and worked with a female influencer to create videos which talked about some of the pain points of modern dating and broadcasted the content with a Sky One Channel sponsorship.

The campaign was successful in all 3 countries, our media strategy of mixing performance and branding paid off.

In France, after the La Flamme Series ended we ran a survey and results demonstrate that we managed to influence the perception of La Flamme fans: 92% of La Flamme fans think that Meetic is a modern, or an app that is relevant today, that is 38% more than fans that where not exposed to the TV Show.  But the best part was that we obtained the business results we where after with Meetic registering an increase of 15% in new

profiles from our target group age, we also registered a 54% increase in app activity from our target age group when compared with the previous year.

In the Netherlands where we associate Lexa with modernity and engage younger single women, our KPI’s demonstrate that we succeeded in reaching out target group with 13K clicks, 1.4M impressions and a CTR of 0,94%, a great result when you consider our benchmark was 0,5%-1%.

Our content was popular with the VTR for completed views over 4%, very high compared to social media benchmark or 0,8%.  Our PVOD activity garnered 500K Impressions, over 350K completed views of our 3 documentaries and a VTR of 66%.

In the UK, our sponsorship of Sky One TV, a channel was a winning strategy.  Over the campaign period Match exceeded their registration targets and were 10% higher than forecast.  Brand tracking after the campaign also showed we increase TOM awareness by 8%, WOM by 2% and consideration by 6%.  The brand tracking also saw and 4% and 12% improvement on differentiation and empowerment.

The Sky One Sponsorship had a very strong performance as we delivered 11% more TVRs thanks planned and overdelivered on reach and frequency.