2018 Silver Best B2C
14 Dec 2018
Agency: OLIVER
Client: The Guardian
Campaign name: Playing cupid for the idealogically suited
Campaign overview
Put your money where your heart is
The brief
Guardian Soulmates is The Guardian’s online dating service: it’s where people go to meet like-minded people and make meaningful connections.
Now it was time to encourage single Guardian readers to sign up and pay for a more premium dating service.
Strategy
There’s nothing quite like meeting someone like-minded. Someone who cares about the same things as you, be it global warming, organic eating, or even the commercialisation of Valentine’s Day.
That’s exactly what Guardian Soulmates is about. But how do you get people to pay for the service? The campaign amplified Soulmates’ selfselecting nature, with humour and fun poked at Guardian-reader clichés. All to show that Soulmates is the perfect place to meet someone who shares the same values.
However, Guardian readers care about worthy issues. But they’re not too worthy, so the creative still spoke to the big issues – from the environmental to the philosophical. But in the use of humour the campaign showed that people who care about those things aren’t as unapproachable as convention would have you believe.
The strategy made Soulmates much more relatable to the target audience.
Creativity
This campaign’s use of dating clichés, coupled with very real issues, played up Soulmates’ self-selecting nature.
The creative made it clear that Soulmates users are very “Guardian” in what they care about.
Which, in turn, differentiated the paid-for, premium service from the free, but less self-selecting competition.
Because as the campaign says, finding love is different when you see the world the same.
The playfulness of the illustration served to humanise the brand, working well with the playfulness of the copy.
The creative made people laugh, while appealing to anyone looking for a real connection with a like-minded individual.
Overall the campaign showcased a humorous way of showing that Soulmates users share each others’ liberal values.
And that makes it worth paying for.
Results
The campaign saw a 45% year-on-year increase in subscriptions to Guardian Soulmates
The campaign successfully differentiated Soulmates from the competition – and persuaded people that a liberal love, based on shared values, was something worth paying to find.
The video was viewed 365,000 times.
Almost half of the people who watched it stuck around until the end – showing that it definitely captured the audience’s imagination and attention.
Team
OLIVER - Rob Kavanagh, Executive Creative Director - Rachel Hatton, Chief Strategy Officer -Sam Jacobs - Creative Director - James Fieldhouse, Senior Copywriter - Octavia Welty, Copywriter - Michela Comisso, Art Director - Anthony Collier, Senior Motion Designer - Liam Smith, Design Director - Katie Howe-Dalgleish, Designer - Bret Syfert, Designer - Chris Evangelista, Artworker - Iza Pawlowska, Account Lead - Ed Howarth, Managing Partner