Friday, May 05, 2006

eHarmony Marriage: Bringing More Than Couples Together


eHarmony has extended their offering to include a service for married couples which is a logical extension of their matchmaking offering. Who, after all, hasn't had difficulties with relationships?

But what is fascinating to me here is the way that their site brings together not just couples, but also a hint of what the convergence (arggh, I used an old buzzword) experience is going to be like when the interactive experience of the internet lands firmly on those big plasma screens in people's media rooms.

We all know that passive television viewing is falling away in favor of a more consumer-directed experience. Instead of having information broadcast to people, the internet has made people expect an environment where they can discover for themselves what they want to know, when they want to know it.

Waiting? Oh, people don't wait anymore.

And this is why the eHarmony Marriage offering on the internet is so intriguing. It informs, entertains, and educates so much better than a static text page could ever do and it makes me think of, oh, about a thousand other ways that this experience could be employed by marketers. I believe that smart marketers want to engage the marketplace with intelligent, compelling experiences that help, not hinder, people to feel in control of their decision to buy.

The point here is that eHarmony is doing that now and it bodes well for the future because, hey, creative marketing is going to be a whole lot of fun over the next five years.