Lovestruck readies TV debut
Lovestruck is poised to launch its first TV advertising slots this Boxing Day as part of a major push to grab market share ahead of the New Year and the peak online dating season.
The campaign kicks off this week with seeding of an online video (dubbed The Theory of Everything), commissioned by the dating site and produced by film company Catsnake, using The 7th Chamber viral video network.
This will be accompanied by a poster campaign to run on public transport hubs of the UK’s major cities, running with the tag line Merry Christmas and a Happy New Relationship, before the Lovestruck brand debuts on TV.
The ads are being shot this week and are scheduled to air on Channel 4 on December 26 during prime viewing hours according to Brett Harding, Lovestruck managing director,
“We [Lovestruck] are at the stage where we’re upping the ante and build trust [in our brand],” he says.
The online dating site is launching the campaign over the holiday season as January is normally a peak season for sign-ups to online dating sites as people re-examine their lives as part of New Year’s resolutions and in time for Valentine’s Day according to Harding.
He also goes on to say that efforts to make The Theory of Everything video, posted below, will be seeded with popular science and dating bloggers and will also leverage Lovestruck’s 27,000-strong Facebook fan base.
“The online video campaign is completely new ground for us so we wanted to remain as independent from it as possible [and not put our brand all over the video]. It’s hard for any dating site to get likes and add ‘virality.’ But for every like we do get it will go into 200 people’s [Facebook] news feeds,” he says.
Earlier this week YouTube released a list of the most popular UK online ads uploaded to YouTube in 2012 with Honda’s Honda Civic’s ‘Spark TV ad’ topping the list.
Steve Chester, head of data and industry programmes at the IAB, adds: “A recent prediction from YouTube and DG Mediamind also predicted that approximately 90% of internet traffic will be video by 2014/15, showing that viral video is fast becoming part of our global culture of communication.
“Therefore brands need to realise how to exploit this to their advantage.”
More than 5.7m people in the UK visited online dating sites in September 2012, showing a 22 per cent increase from the same month last year according to ComScore figures with Plenty of Fish ranking as the most popular brand with nearly 1.5m users.
