Match.com picks Travelocity chief as UK managing director

Former Travelocity.co.uk marketer Charlotte Harper has been appointed as UK managing director for international dating website Match.com.

The appointment comes as Match.com extends its successful “Make Love Happen” campaign for the first quarter of 2006, with a further &£2m earmarked for television, radio and outdoor advertising.

Harper, who was marketing director when she left Travelocity last December following its merger with Lastminute.com, will focus on brand and customer development.

Harper will be responsible for developing the company’s marketing strategy for the UK after its first experiment with television advertising last year (MW September 1). New York agency Hanft Raboy & Partners developed the creative work for the &£3m campaign. Monkey Communications handles its UK planning and M2M handles the UK media buying account.

Match.com, which was launched in 1995, is now owned by IAC/Inter ActiveCorp. This company also owns Ask Jeeves, which it bought for $1.85bn (&£987m) last April. It claims to be the biggest player in the UK online dating market. It has more than 2.7 million UK members at the moment, and there are about 110,000 new registrations for the dating service every month.

Before joining Travelocity, Harper was brand director at O2 and responsible for the re-branding of six mobile companies across Europe. These companies included BT Cellnet and Genie.

She joined O2 from BSkyB, where she held a number of positions, ending up as marketing controller for broadcast.