Dates Line Up For HBS Alum

First there was the Harvard Computer Society’s Datamatch and its imitators, which purported to pair off Crimson soul- or bedmates through the magic of the Internet questionnaire.

Then came the 2004 sexual revolution of thefacebook.com, whose “random play” and “whatever I can get” interest categories bedeviled (or enlivened) the profiles of thousands of Harvard students before being exported to a nation of eager undergrads.

And now there is DateLance.com—and its corresponding billboard, perched on I-15 near Utah Lake and hawking the site’s sole service.

“I’m Lance!” the sign announces. “Let’s go out!”

Both billboard and web site introduce Lance Archibald as the proverbial perfect match—he is a 2003 Harvard Business School graduate, a former basketball player for Brigham Young University, and the director of marketing for a graphic design company. And as an unmarried 31-year-old member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—whose adherents often marry in their early-to-mid twenties—he is something of an oddity.

The site directs visitors to fill out a survey for a shot at dating Lance himself, or, barring that, to send automated e-mails to friends who might have a better chance.

What makes DateLance.com unique in the age of ubiquitous cyber-aggrandizement, however, is that Archibald—who now has more than 1,600 applicants to choose from—had no hand in the site. In fact, Archibald didn’t know it existed until he drove by his own billboard, which is in Lindon, some 40 miles to the south of Salt Lake City.

The campaign was the brainchild of “Team DateLance,” an enthusiastic group of Archibald’s co-workers at LogoWorks, a Lindon-based company that designs logos for other businesses.

“We thought we’d get some local girls to submit their profiles,” said Noelle Bates, one of the driving forces behind Team DateLance who has reviewed about half of the applications herself.

“It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s get 2,000 girls to date Lance.’ We thought we’d get 50,” she said.

Although the billboard is in an obscure location, Bates said the applications—most of them not evidently jokes—have been streaming in from around the globe since the Associated Press reported on the unorthodox campaign last Friday.

“It’s been a little bit nuts...we had no idea” the site would get so many applications, Bates said.

Archibald has yet to select his lucky hopeful—he left this week for a trip to Africa. But Bates said that Team DateLance was hard at work culling potential winners from the masses, finding about one promising result in every 20 applications.

While DateLance.com proclaims Archibald’s Mormon faith—he conducted his mission in Finland—religion is not a component of the application. “I’ve never actually asked Lance that question, but he’s a pretty open-minded guy,” Bates said.

Tess Aga, a counselor for LunchDates, a Boston-based company that arranges lunch rendezvous for singles, said it was the first time she had heard of such an extreme campaign.

“[Lance] might meet some very interesting people, but he should be careful,” she said.

“With identity theft out there, I wouldn’t want to be him,” Aga said.

—Staff writer Brendan R. Linn can be reached at blinn@fas.harvard.edu.