Sarah Silverman's a Hit on JDate

Hey, ladies: Wanna get your JDate profile noticed? Get all potty-mouthed and start taking cracks at Brit and Paris. Worked for Sarah Silverman.

To promote the second season of Silverman’s series The Sarah Silverman Program, which premieres Wednesday, Oct. 3, Comedy Central created a profile for the standup-cum-TV star on JDate, the mother of all Jewish dating sites.

Apparently, Silverman, who frequently refers to her Jewish background, has been a big draw among the Chosen People. In the ten or so days since it went up, Silverman’s profile has received more than 2,000 e-mails from purported suitors—many, it appears, “just wanted to send her jokes,” the network says.

For those unfamiliar with the average volume of e-mails that an, um, average-looking Jewess on JDate might receive in that period of time, that’s a lot (not that I would know). So many, in fact, that out of the 30-plus Websites where Comedy advertised Silverman—including such biggies as Facebook, Gawker and PerezHilton.com—it was Jdate that drove the most traffic back to the show’s own microsite on Comedy’s homepage.

The ad was part of a marketing campaign valued at “a few million dollars” by Comedy’s VP of Marketing, Deena Stern, making it one of the network’s biggest of the year. Designed to “take in the unique, hip, controversial side of Sarah in the show,” Stern says, some 25% of the campaign’s budget went to digital buys, more than the network had ever allocated for online buys in the past.

“We just felt like there’s no better way for people to experience Sarah than on the Web,” says Stern.

As Comedy’s better marketing campaigns usually do, Silverman’s included irreverent street marketing elements – such as doggie “poop” bags (Sarah’s dog Doug is featured prominently on the show) in New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco and Boston; “holy condoms” (a subject from an upcoming episode) in the same cities; and street decals and fake lost-dog posters in New York and L.A. It also includes traditional print, outdoor, radio and cable ads, as well as a "Me Moments" Website, where viewers can listen to sound clips from season one.

As for the JDate page, alas, it was fake and monitored by a freelance agency in Silverman’s stead. The network plans on sending her selections of the best at some point. And as far as we know, she’s still with Jimmy Kimmel—mazel.

By Anne Becker