This Moncton Man’s Friends Created A Whole Campaign To Help Him Meet Women
MONCTON – How much do your friends love you? William (Sandy) Teed’s friends love him enough to create a whole website, launch a social media campaign and send an e-mail blast to help him meet women.
Sandy’s friends > your friends.
Sandy is what his friends describe as “smart, caring, funny, and conveniently, single.” He cooks and does the dishes, he’s a “rugged outdoorsman” and a “great guy, in and out.”
But since he moved back to Moncton from Saint John to work as a web and mobile application developer at Blaze Studios in 2016, he hasn’t been meeting many women. Sandy told Huddle in an e-mail that he’s been focusing on his career and hasn’t dated anyone seriously in the last two years.
So, Blaze decided to help him the way they would help a client – using creativity and technology, said company partner Andrew MacKinnon in an e-mail to Huddle.
“We decided to see what would happen if we approached Sandy’s problem, meeting women, the same way we approach a problem from one of our clients. Then we decided it would be fun to see what would happen if we devoted all of our company’s resources, experience, and expertise toward the goal of finding the woman of Sandy’s dreams,” he said.
The whole Blaze team is taking part in this project, from strategists to web developers to the copywriter.
“We treated Sandy like we would one of our larger national clients. Sandy, who is a web and application developer, was part of the team responsible for building his own site,” MacKinnon said.
The process took six months, with photo-shoots beginning in March. Stylist and fashion blogger Sarah Duquette of Boho & Braids, photographer Denis Duquette, and stylist Emily Doucet of Eccentric Hair Studio were also among those who contributed to making Sandy look his best for the website.
Blaze’s media planning team also placed ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google to single women and their friends in the Greater Moncton Area. And there’s more.
“At the moment we’re considering billboards, wrapping one or more buses, posters, and helium balloons with Sandy’s face on them. We’re really excited about completely overdoing this,” MacKinnon said.
But aside from helping build the website, Sandy said he generally has no idea what’s going on. And he has “almost” no expectations from this “incredibly awkward” campaign.
“I’ve left myself completely in their hands,” he said in an e-mail to Huddle. “Yesterday, I overheard them talking about how much it would cost to hire a skywriting plane.”
Here are a few photos of Sandy from the website:
After having little success with dating apps in the past, this approach might just work for Sandy.
Blaze wants Sandy to stand out. So, instead of creating a profile for Sandy on a dating app where he will be included alongside hundreds of others, they made a dating site with only Sandy’s profile on it.
“Because we designed the site, we could include all of the photos and information we needed to best illustrate why our friend Sandy was worth meeting,” MacKinnon said. “And instead of women needing to create profiles where they’d be judged based on pictures, we created a matching process where they don’t have to create an account to participate and only share with us the information about themselves we knew was important to Sandy.”
Ladies who are interested to have an all-expenses-paid date with Sandy, scoot over to the website and fill out an application. Submissions will be vetted by Sandy’s closest friends based on shared interests and his criteria for an ideal partner – confident, honest, kind, generous, and loving.
“I’m hoping to find the sort of person who finds this whole thing as ridiculous as I do. Someone with similar interests who is looking for a partner,” Sandy said. “I will do my best to live up to this hype. I am crippled by fear of disappointing [the women I meet].”
So far, Sandy hasn’t told his family about this campaign.
“But, I think they’re starting to find out and are pretty confused. Definitely, if the balloons thing happens…,” he said.