In the spring of 2014, Dan Perino, a New York actor, plastered “looking for a girlfriend” fliers all over the city. “Just tired of the singles scene and hoping to meet the right person,” it said, along with his picture and phone number.
At the time, Mr. Perino was one of the few people to take such a public approach in seeking a relationship. He recently reposted the fliers, though now it seems that he’s one of many looking for love in this way.
Noticing a rise in analog dating techniques, Danielle Dietzek and Julie Griggs, the founders of Fourplay, an app where single friends team up, match with other pairs of single friends and go on double dates, recently started a marketing campaign with fliers that resemble personal ads.
The fliers were strategically placed throughout New York City, in Greenpoint, Murray Hill, Williamsburg, the East Village, West Village, Lower East Side, Upper East Side and in Hoboken, N.J. They included trackable QR codes that linked back to the app store where you could download Fourplay. In the past week, the fliers have been scanned nearly 450 times, indicating a shift in how singles are looking to connect.
But it’s not just fliers.
In Philadelphia, David Cline, a 28-year-old data manager, made a “Dave is single” billboard and corresponding Instagram account as a new kind of dating profile. Initially intending it to be a goofy experiment, Mr. Cline has found the influx of responses, with nearly 500 people reaching out, to be a welcome change from the dearth of replies on dating apps.
This summer, one of them came from Danya Trommer, a comedian who works in advertising. Ms. Trommer, formerly of Boston, saw Mr. Cline’s billboard in a Facebook post just a few weeks before moving to Philadelphia and was intrigued. “I went on Dave’s profile and his latest post was about Mega Man Battle Network, which is such a niche video game,” she said.
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