The dating site Chemistry.com has started a new ad campaign that slams eHarmony’s policy of rejecting supposedly “unsuitable” applicants while pointing out that Chemisty.com has no such exclusionary policy. Is the campaign inspired or misguided? Slate’s Seth Stevenson weighs in with some good points and more background on the politics and dating site infighting the campaign has kicked up.

Putting the politics aside for this post, I want to focus on Stevenson’s final conclusion about the overall effectiveness of the campaign. I think he’s right. You have to be really careful to ensure that messaging works for ALL your audiences. In Chemistry.com’s case they have two main audiences: 1) those who already know they want to join a dating site (and, in some cases, got rejected by one) and 2) those who are thinking about joining a site, but want to shop around and choose the one with the best possible dating pool.

Chemistry.com’s ads speak only to audience #1. For those people, the ads will certainly be effective. The tag line “come as you are” sounds friendly and open, and implies that if they’ve been rejected elsewhere unfairly, they have a “home” to come to.

But it seems to me Chemisty.com completely ignored audience #2 when designing the ads. To those people who probably have never used eHarmony or who have no opinion of it, the ad messaging sounds dangerously like, “We’re the dating site that accepts all the other sites’ rejects!” Probably not what a discerning dater wants to hear. And even worse, it seems like there might be a danger of the ad not just failing for group #2, but completely backfiring—it’s possible the campaign could actually send more of this group to eHarmony, because there may be a distinct desire to take the eHarmony test just to reassure themselves that THEY aren’t a “dating reject.”

So will the ads work? Well, if there are more people out there in camp #1 than camp #2, Chemistry.com will probably be able to call the campaign a success. If there aren’t, they won’t. But seriously, are there THAT many eHarmony rejects? And even if there are, ultimately wouldn’t it have been smarter to craft a message that would work for BOTH groups, to capture everyone possible?