I want to feel like it’s okay to say, “Hey, I'm proudly an LGBTQ ally” or “I'm very concerned about the environment, and if you don't believe climate change is real, get the fuck out”’ - swipe left, in other words.” “ ‘Hey, hang on, I want my dates’ views on social and political issues. OkCupid saw an opportunity to help people connect based on their values. “But we started telling people about it.”Īfter the 2016 US presidential election, Hobley says, people - and singles - were more passionate and more vocal about their beliefs than ever before. “All the great things that were true about OKCupid years ago remained - which matching on the things that matter to you,” says Hobley. Through it all, the product and the brand both maintained the same central ethos of ‘matching on what matters.’Īnd ‘matching on what matters’ helped propel the platform into its new, youthful, über-cool, radically inclusive iteration. Meanwhile, Hobley and her team went to work on reinventing the brand’s image. Just over a year later, it appointed Marcus Lofthouse as its new chief product officer to help transform the product experience. The company brought on Ariel Charytan as its new chief executive officer in January of 2018 - right as the bold ‘DTF’ campaign was rolling out across the US. OkCupid had never launched a marketing campaign before early 2018, when it unveiled the colorful, unapologetic, Wieden+Kennedy-led ‘DTF’ campaign that gave new meanings to the naughty acronym (for the uninitiated, DTF is internet shorthand for ’down to fuck’). People didn’t know what was interesting about the product and about that experience.” ‘DTF’ messaging cuts to the chase So OKCupid definitely had some perception issues, especially with younger daters. “And when you’ve been around a long time and you have been out there telling the story of why this is a good place to meet great people, then people are left to their own devices to develop that perception. “Dating apps are a category a little bit like the nightlife scene - what’s the coolest, newest, latest,” Hobley tells The Drum.
But it needed a new approach for cutting through the noise. By the time Melissa Hobley, a former Walgreens executive, took the post, OkCupid had already amassed a massive user base. Recognizing it was time to get more aggressive, OkCupid appointed its first global chief marketing officer in 2017. As a result, the platform was losing potential users to newcomers and sister brands like Tinder, which had come on the scene in 2012 and appealed to younger, hookup-focused users. Its narrative and image hadn’t evolved much since its founding. The platform retained its focus on getting users to ‘match on what matters’ - the platform’s functionality and philosophy were both rooted in the principle of encouraging singles to choose potential partners based on what’s most important to them.ĭespite the platform’s advances, the brand was tired and lacked freshness. The group owns a number of popular dating and networking platforms including Tinder, Hinge and .Īs smartphone adoption skyrocketed and online dating went mobile, OkCupid was among the first digital dating platforms to launch an effective, user-friendly mobile version. In 2011, they sold the business to InterActiveCorp (IAC), the holding company that owns Match Group.
After selling SparkMatch to Barnes & Noble, the team built what is now OkCupid. The platform allowed users to connect based on the results of a personality assessment similar to the popularized Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Founded in 2004 by Chris Coyne, Christian Rudder, Sam Yagan and Max Krohn - the Harvard students who also created SparkNotes - OkCupid has its roots in what was once called SparkMatch.
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