Marketing Profile - Brand Republic

'There is no recession in the business of love and romance,' he jokes.

Online dating has become more socially acceptable, and

Online dating has become more socially acceptable, and therefore increasingly profitable; Match.com is the biggest player in the world with more than 15m members. Stockwood remains touchingly committed to ensuring that people genuinely looking for love have the best chance of success and the best possible experience with Match.com.

Stockwood's entrepreneurial streak makes him well placed to capitalise on this growth. After leaving school at 18, he took various jobs, including working at Disney World in Florida, before winning a scholarship to study philosophy.

His first job in the online arena was at Lufthansa where he developed a student offering, before taking a self-confessed 'leap of faith' and joining Lastminute.com. Subsequently, he rose rapidly through the ranks before becoming managing director of Travelocity after its acquisition of Lastminute.com.

'Travel was an interesting sector, but love is something else entirely. The stories of the people who have found love on the site and how it has changed their lives are unimaginable in any other sector,' he says. While Match.com has become a huge global business it still cares about the individual users and, in a move reminiscent of Cilla Black's Blind Date days, the head of PR will soon be buying a new hat, having been invited to the latest Match.com wedding.

Stockwood is a bit of a charmer, and former colleague, Carl Lyons, one-time head of marketing at Lastminute.com and now marketing director of mobile start-up Truphone, says Stockwood always kept his cool despite the rollercoaster of working at the travel site. 'He is a really effervescent and charming character with a great drive,' he adds.

Match.com predicts the European dating site will have doubled in size by 2011, and far from being a threat, Stockwood believes social networking sites such as Facebook could assist this growth because they have made people less inhibited about meeting people online. 'Social networks need to prove they have longevity and Match.com has already done that,' he says.

Nonetheless there are challenges. The online dating market is highly competitive and there are plenty of free options for budding online daters. The market has also received bad press as a result of scams, where fake online profiles are set up to fleece potential daters of cash. In addition, increasingly explicit content is becoming the norm. Craigslist, for example, was once known for its flat listings, but has morphed into a dating hub and is now as much renowned for questionable sex postings as its properties.

Stockwood believes the key differential for Match.com is that every profile on the site is checked before it is posted. The site also operates a 'one strike and you are out' policy, whereby if any complaints are made against a profile it is swiftly removed. 'The challenge now is how we grow the market and build trust in the online dating arena as a whole, as well as how we distinguish ourselves from the free sites,' he says. 

Match.com's current marketing campaign, which depicts Cupid and fate as an overweight and hapless duo, is designed to appeal to people who are intent on finding love. 'Many people in our target market are willing to leave their love life to chance, rather than taking control as they would in other parts of their lives,' he says. 

As a genuine believer in his product Stockwood can't help but ask if I am unattached in his continuing quest to sign up another face to Match.com. With the UK singles market expected to hit 16m by 2010 and internet dating becoming increasingly socially acceptable Cupid may well consider hanging up his bow before too long.