A few months ago I was at a popular bar in my hometown of Edmonton using the facilities when I noticed in the bathroom an advertisement for Lavalife, one of the more popular dating sites on the Internet. The advertisements couldn’t be missed because, though they were not large, they were above the urinals at about eye level from where I was standing and there is not much else a man can do while standing at urinal but look down, or look straight. Never, ever look beside you unless you want to risk having the guy standing there call you gay (not that there is anything wrong with being gay, in my view).
The advertisement I saw showed some gorgeous women, elegant and classy with martini drinks, having fun in a club or bar and the wording in the ad said: “Score More.”
While without doubt there are some women who use online dating for sex, clearly the advertisement was appealing to men, with gorgeous women as the photo subjects, and I wondered if the women’s bathroom had an analogous advertisement that appealed mainly to women. I asked one of the women that was in my group of friends what the ads about Lavalife were like in her bathroom. She said she hadn’t noticed and seemed uninterested until I explained the ad in the men’s bathroom and my suspicions about the site marketing. She agreed to check and when she came back, just as I suspected, she said that they portrayed Lavalife as a site where women could find the true loves of their lives.
Absolutely brilliant.
From this we can conclude one thing. In Lavalife’s marketing, at least in bars, there is definitely a gap between the type of women they lure to the site (ones who are looking for steady boyfriends and possibly husbands) and the type of men that they bring to the site (ones that are looking for only one thing). No doubt this has lead to some online date mismatches as players represent themselves as potential lifemates then don’t call back, if you know what I mean.
I thought to myself that an advertisement like the one that was in the guy’s bathroom could only be put in a men’s bathroom where it was free from the gaze of women. Anywhere else, like a common area or billboard, and it would certainly get spotted by women and a lot of female Lavalife patrons might not like how they are being portrayed to their respective counterparts. While Lavalife might have a beef with me for revealing their secret and diabolical plan, my loyalty remains to my readership.
Click the links in the margin for other online dating articles by myself.