It was their job to bring couples together and keep the tribe alive,” explained independent creative director David Roth, who created the campaign with Hogarth Worldwide.“Our campaign casts the traditional yentas as Jdate programmers coding through the night to build the best Jewish matchmaking site.”In the advertisements, three adorable grandmothers wear the typical Silicon Valley programmer outfit (branded hoodie & t-shirt, beanie, and oversized headphones). “She knows Java Script, Python, and Shirley Finkelstein’s grandson” reads another.“Chief Yenta Mimi and her crack team of developers have brought a little slice of Silicon Valley to New York this year, and having mastered Java Script, Python and PHP, they’ve helped us re-launch Jdate better than ever.So, make like Mimi’s great-nephew and sign up already!It’s important that the special someone you meet cares for the real you, not the artificial one.Answer the questions with lots of detail, but try not to ramble.• achieve goals with personal trainers and certified Pilates instructors.
The campaign is currently running on 300 billboards in Manhattan and Brooklyn.“Back in the shtetl days, old Jewish women, or Yentas, served as matchmakers.But the ladies are smartly accessorised with age-appropriate fashion like orthopaedic shoes and clunky granny glasses. “Her dreidel game is filthy but her code is clean” reads a third.To re-enforce the tech company setting, they are surrounded by energy drinks, post-it notes, and laptops. The tagline is simply “Powered by Yentas.”“Jdate is very much like a Yenta - tenacious and unrelenting in the search for that one perfect Jewish partner and passionate about the preservation of the Jewish identity,” said Bart Visser, Brand Director at Jdate parent Spark Networks SE, which also owns the Christian Mingle dating service.For 100 years, diversity has been at the heart of the JCC, dating back to when the first Eastern European Jews made their way to Indianapolis in the early 1900’s.Then the JCC was a communal center where people from this growing immigrant community gathered for social, recreational, and educational activities.