For the next part in our celebration of Superbrands official CoolBrands list for 2009/10, we spoke to Simon Johnson, Product Manager at QSoft Consulting – the parent company of Gaydar.co.uk – about the site’s inclusion this year.

Now the world’s largest gay brand, the company has been bringing like-minded people together for 10 years. Launched with the aim of being less formal than its competition, Gaydar was applauded by the CoolBrands panel for creating a community for thousands of isolated individuals who live in countries where homosexuality remains illegal or homophobia highly prevalent.  A forward thinking-team has built the site mainly through word of mouth to now feature over five million members.

Can you explain your role, what you’re responsible for and how that fits into the rest of the business?

Autumn 2009, QSoft Consulting Ltd (the parent company of Gaydar.co.uk) went through a major restructure of the board of directors and management team. Henry Badenhorst (founder of Gaydar) is now Chairman and Trevor Martin has been appointed Managing Director and will take responsibility for the day to day running of the business while retaining control over Marketing. Trevor’s immediate remit is to advance the development of Gaydar’s new technology infrastructure and new features in preparation for the brand’s 10th Birthday in 2010.

I joined QSoft in July 2007 as Marketing Manager and was appointed Product Manager, a new position created by the restructure. My role now is to focus specifically on the needs of customers, global marketing strategies, product innovations and loyalty across the group.

Who ‘owns’ digital within your organisation?

We all do. We’re in a unique position where our brands have been built around digital and interactivity. GaydarRadio for instance was one of the first radio stations to offer chat rooms during live programming. Our strategy and direction is pulled together by the Product and Marketing departments, but ultimately it’s all our responsibility to ensure we’re presented and represented effectively online outside of Gaydar.co.uk.

What do you do online that’s external to the core website? How does this fit into your comms strategy?

Marketing at Gaydar focuses heavily on print display advertising and grass root event marketing. It worked, at the time of launch Gaydar enjoyed about 70% market share – what we’re seeing now are new players coming into the market and taking small bites, yet not affecting our signups. We’re growing at a rate of about 20% year on year with growth in our own emerging markets such as Latin America. We’re about to hit the 6 million member mark with digital at the forefront of our acquisition strategy for 2010.

PPC campaigns launched globally across Google late 2009 with a sustained campaign planned for 2010 which is teamed with digital display across select blogs – especially in America where the quality of content could signal the end of mainstream gay magazines. We’re exploiting the readymade audiences of social networks such as Facebook. Free social networks do pose a threat to Gaydar, however as an adult site, and testosterone a key part in the success of Gaydar – sex and dating will always have an appeal. Our official fan page on Facebook has over 6000 fans and offers useful insights into what our customers are thinking and offers an instant panel of vocal members who test out new products and services. We should be brand building outside of Gaydar.co.uk and traditional channels. Gay men now trade profile names as readily as their mobile number, but we’re missing out on a huge bisexual and curious market who might want to give gay a go.

In the second quarter we’re launching our first campaign-based web site – we could have opted to use social network platforms but we want the creative freedom that comes with building a standalone site that has the Gaydar brand, style and tone from the outset.

We’re also investing heavily in email marketing. ‘Playtime’, Gaydar’s customer email magazine designed by Urban Studio (Germany) and launched as a trial in 2009, has been a great success with over a million members subscribed and will be rolled out globally in 9 different languages. We have partnered with MailPerformance to manage our data more effectively, offer dynamic content and speak one to one with our members rather than at our members. Email marketing and the accompanying loyalty programme in development is perhaps our most important retention tool in our communications strategy and we’re seeing immediate results from an increase in upgrades and time spent online.

The aspect of helping men connect in countries where homosexuality is illegal, that’s a fairly sensitive issue. The site has grown largely through word of mouth, which helps this, but is there anything you do to protect your users proactively?

One of the principal reasons for Gaydar’s success has been its unswerving commitment to its community. We work to ensure our members both at home and abroad have an environment they can feel comfortable in and without fear of prosecution using secure domains and non-branded versions of Gaydar. Local LGBT groups and Police Liaison officers can also be contacted via Gaydar.

Is there anything you can tell me about upcoming campaigns/activity/new functionality on the site?

We’re about to celebrate Gaydar’s 10^th birthday. To help the aging process we’ve spent the last few months dermabrasing, micro-exfoliating and giving Gaydar a fresh new face for members to enjoy. Kicking off with the upgrade of our very popular chat rooms followed shortly by a new look log-in page with multivariate capabilities for direct and search traffic.

The biggest launch in the first quarter will be the iPhone and smartphone application.  We’re kicking off the launch of the official Gaydar app in January, debuting on the phone that started a revolution of app hungry fans. iPhone and iTouch owners will be able to download the app from iTunes and enjoy all the features they’ve grown to love. Touch Gaydar for the first time, with easy access to friends and favourites, live chat, search for guys in their local area using inbuilt GPS (Gaydar Positioning System) and of course instant messaging. There are many more cool features, but we’ll let you discover them for yourself. Standby, we’re shipping the official Gaydar iPhone app in February with Symbian, Android and Blackberry apps following soon after.