MTA rejects OkCupid ads that were previously OK’d

The MTA’s revised advertising policy is already having an impact. At least one brand’s OOH advertising strategy has been affected by not only the MTA’s recent ban on cannabis ads, but also its newly expanded restrictions on sex-related advertising.

• In September 2021, OkCupid introduced its “Every Single Person” campaign, which CMO Melissa Hobley described as an inclusive campaign created to make all types of daters feel welcome on the online dating service.
• For instance, one ad welcomes “every single insomniac” to the service, while another says that OkCupid is for “every single pansexual.” It ran on multiple channels, from digital to OOH, including the NYC subway system.
• OkCupid decided to bring the campaign back in 2022 for what Hobley told Marketing Brew is peak dating-app season (January and February), kicking off its second rollout in NYC.

What happened next: The MTA rejected four of the “Every Single Person” campaign images that it had previously approved only months prior, citing both its new cannabis advertising ban and its recently expanded definition of a “sexually oriented product or service,” according to OkCupid.

• One image referencing “tokers” was rejected due to the MTA’s ban on ads promoting “cannabis or any cannabis-related product,” while the other three were nixed due to the MTA’s ban on references to “sexual activity.”

“We were definitely scrambling, and surprised that images that were [okay] just four months prior we were now being told that we could not bring to life,” Hobley told us, adding that the timing (this all happened over the holidays) made having about a third of the campaign images rejected even worse.

But, but, but: OkCupid says it ended up paying the MTA around the same amount of money this time around, even without those four images (Hobley declined to share specific figures). And she told us the situation won’t prevent OkCupid from working with the MTA for future campaigns.

Bottom line: “​​We were really disappointed in [the] MTA’s decision…but we also love the subway, and we love the medium as a way to tell a story,” she explained.—PB