Dating has changed dramatically in a very short space of time. Gone are the days of spotting someone from across the room and trying to delve into an evening-long game of awkward eye contact until one of you musters up the confidence to approach the other and, heaven forbid, start a conversation … in real life. These days it’s left up to the gods of swiping right or left.
We’ve all moved online, which poses many interesting conversations in itself. Benefit of internet dating: you meet people you wouldn’t normally. Greater benefit: you meet people that you ordinarily would never want to meet, which makes for great stories. So, we did just that.
The challenge
Promote the new Netflix Love series using funny and awkward stories related to the themes of the new show, directed by Judd Apatow.
Partnering with our experts, Guardian Soulmates, we asked our readers for their good, bad, funny and shocking dating stories and they did not hold back. From people turning up to the wrong date to several whose dates arrived utterly plastered, we had it all. Thank you, Soulmates.
The matchmaking part
We then sent eight of our lovely Soulmates users on dates to try our hand at playing Cupid. In order to find the “perfect match” we devised a compatibility quiz using a mixture of personality and viewing preference questions to pair those who love to watch the same Netflix shows.
A fun night at a great restaurant with a complete stranger – what could possibly go wrong? Judging by the scores – averaging at 7/10 – not much. I do hope we get our first Soulmates/Netflix marriage!
The funny part
Deciding that wasn’t enough, we then stuck a camera in front of a group of comedy stars and asked them to describe the most awkward date they’ve ever had. After watching the most cringeworthy footage for a couple of days we got it down to three fantastically hilarious scenes: a first date which involved puking in a bath; a matchmaking cat (spurred on by Isy Suttie from Peep Show); and a trip to A&E after a guy’s you-know-what maybe … accidentally … got sliced open. Yeah.
We worked with production company Hoot, who have previously produced content for TV channel Dave, to then turn them into very entertaining videos.
The stats part
Not only did we love working on this project, but our audience loved reading it. We achieved 173,000 unique users in just three weeks with page views at a staggering 240,000.
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