Zoosk is one of the online-date searching website, such as Match.com and eHarmony. The advertisement is popularly referred as "Man versus dart," or as a banned commercial, which was actually banned in Europe only and was broadcasted in the US. And I know it is broadcasted in the US because I saw this commercial during winter break when I was staying at my friend's house. The advertisement starts with two women, who seem like to be at a workplace and looking at Zoosk, just running into a "cute" guy. The woman who was looking over the shoulder says that she is more into the atheletic type, and the other woman who was actually searching for a date asks, "Didn't your friend set you up with an 'athelete'?" Then there's a quick flashback of the woman's date with the "athelete," which is quite a terrible date. The guy is not an athelete, nor atheletic because apparently he thinks that dart is a "real sport," performing his darting skill with a very odd shout and a stretch, shooting a random guy's chest with his dart who was standing somewhat close to the actual dartboard. This dart-hitting-a-person part was the reason for banning in Europe. After that short flashback, the woman tells her friend that she would just stick to Zoosk's ratings, with her iffy voice that strongly suggesting that it's better to look at the information in Zoosk than to hope that the set-up date would turn out to meet all the standards that the person is looking for.
What makes this advertisement unique is that, unlike the two example websites' adertisements, which mainly shoots for the need for affiliation and forms a lot of aesthetic comfortness, Zoosk's advertisement shoots for something different. It contains much more touch of humor, and evokes the "negative" emotion by showing the viewer the possible disasters that can occur by using other sites or sources for a date than Zoosk. But I think the humor kind of backfired in this advertisement because when I was trying to remember this ad, I only remembered the flashback part, which was hilarious, and not actually the name of the website, Zoosk. But for a short-term, I would say that this strategy is very effective since it indeed leaves a very strong impression and if I were a person who was trying to find a date on website, I would've definitely tried Zoosk just for the huge laugh that it gave me. Also, I've ran into several ads made by eHarmony and Match.com, and because their ad strategies are so similar and are not changing their style much, I find it rather boring and unoriginal. Therefore in that way, I think Zoosk did a really good job for being different, and in a good way too.
This is the example commercial that I could find for eHarmony. I hope this could explain what I meant by boring or unoriginal:
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