Groupon celebrates "the man who gave birth to you" #FdAdFriday

(Buzzfeed)

I'm really glad that Groupon's digital designers know how to cut and paste. I just wish they'd proofread the damn things.

Either that, or they are appealing to a very narrow market of FtM transgender dads. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

F'd Ad Fridays: Groupon copywriting at its finest.

Here's the body copy. Seriously:

"The problem with invisibility is that cloak fashions fade rapidly and past-season trends don't capture anyone's eyes for resale. Manage your appearance in a more sustainable way with today's Groupon to Luxe Spa. Choose from three options:

• For $20, you get a women's haircut, wash, and blow-dry (a $40 value).
• For $20, you get a Brazilian wax (a $45 value).
• For $30, you get a women's haircut, wash, and blow-dry, plus a Brazilian wax (an $85 value). 

A modern, full-service spa, Luxe Spa plunges bodies into beautifying bliss beneath the hands of skilled stylists and aestheticians. The women's haircut, wash, and blow-dry lops and sculpts locks for a fresh look made to inspire the next generation of fairy-tale writers. By request, Luxe will douse head threads in completely organic shampoos and styling products from the Simply Organic line. Alternatively, freshly snipped scalps with plans to hit the beach can descruff bikini zones with a Brazilian wax. As souls simmer in an environment tailored to one's personal preferences, an expert aesthetician removes any trace of hair, giving waxing areas legitimate reason to challenge silk to a smooth-off."

I challenge thee to a smooth off, thou scruffian!

Does Your Brand Have Asperger's Syndrome?

Note: This is not an attempt to trivialize human autism spectrum disorders in any way. But this hit me the other day and the metaphor is apt.

Two current marketing truisms:

- A brand is a personality.


- Brands are more socially active than ever before.

But what if your brand has difficulty with its social skills?

Look at Groupon. It's a brand that is built on what it has to offer, which is deals! deals! deals! But when it made its first major branding foray on national advertising, despite being well-intentioned it ended up just pissing everyone off.

"He spit in this fish curry, didn't he?"

So what happened?

Let's compare the Groupon fiasco with some select symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome, based on social difficulties and inappropriate expression.

GILLBERG'S CRITERIA FOR ASPERGER'S DISORDER


1.Severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction
(at least two of the following)
(a) inability to interact with peers
(b) lack of desire to interact with peers
(c) lack of appreciation of social cues
(d) socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior

Groupon's Super Bowl campaign showed complete misunderstanding of how the audience would react to its ads that made fun of social causes. This was immediately apparent in the flurry of "WTF?" Tweets among professional marketers and customers alike.

This apparently came as a complete surprise to the advertiser, who expected that a drunken football audience would "get" that it was subtly making fun of its own origins in the not-for-profit sector — despite having done nothing significant in advance to communicate it. It was as if we were all supposed to be in on a very private in-joke.

If you have friends or family with Asperger's, this may sound like a familiar situation. Inappropriate jokes, and random statements with absolutely no context, seem to come with the territory.

2.All-absorbing narrow interest
(at least one of the following)
(a) exclusion of other activities
(b) repetitive adherence
(c) more rote than meaning


3.Imposition of routines and interests
(at least one of the following)
(a) on self, in aspects of life
(b) on others

The Groupon brand owes much to the peculiarities of its founder, Andrew Mason, who is known for his bizarre answers to interviewers. When asked by the New York Times last year to confirm or deny rumours that Groupon was about to be bought out by Yahoo, he famously quipped: “Only if you want to talk about my other passion, building miniature dollhouses.”

4.Speech and language problems
(at least three of the following)
(a) delayed development
(b) superficially perfect expressive language
(c) formal, pedantic language
(d) odd prosody, peculiar voice characteristics
(e) impairment of comprehension including misinterpretations of literal/implied meanings

To me, this is sort-of about Groupon marketing and PR. When creating the ads, Groupon's agency (CP+B) failed to make any mention of the serious corporate social responsibility behind the campaign. (Later added as a last-ditch edit.) After the Super Bowl fiasco, it took the company almost 24 hours to respond to complaints. And it was too little, too late.

5.Non-verbal communication problems
(at least one of the following)
(a) limited use of gestures
(b) clumsy/gauche body language
(c) limited facial expression
(d) inappropriate expression
(e) peculiar, stiff gaze

And CP+B? Good Lord! The agency went into full defence mode. Rather than saying "sorry" and "we'll learn from this" — with empathy and humility — they just kept arrogantly hammering their Twitter followers with any positive press they could, along with too-late links to the original intent of Groupon's CSR.

6.Motor clumsiness: poor performance on neurodevelopmental examination

A week and a half later, they're still at it:

Despite the fact that the campaign has been killed.

So, what can be learned from all this? Well, when a person has difficulties with social integration, they can only work on personal strategies to deal with their own empathetic or communication deficits. (If you, or someone you love, is in this situation, start here.)

A brand is different. Even though the Groupon brand is — in some ways — and extension of its founder, it has outgrown that phase. Groupon is now well-enough known that its brand is in the hands of its consumers. Its social relations will now determine its brand value.

The good news for Groupon is that it can change its personality much more easily than a person can. In a group effort, Groupon's community manager, PR people, and whatever ad agency they choose in the future can work to educate the public about their real intentions and heal old wounds.

Plus, it can't have been that bad. I keep seeing Groupon updates from friends on my Facebook newsfeed.

Let's gang up on Groupon

As usual, last night's crop of Super Bowl ads included the good, the bad, and the ugly.

One of the most complained about among my Twitter gang wasn't even one of the sexy ones. It was the Groupon spot, by CP + B:



Don't get me wrong. I have a sense of humour, and it can be quite a cynical one. But I still think this was a big mistake for a brand that is going mainstream.

Why? Because social media have given people their own soap boxes, which they are more than happy to use. And those people have a tendency to take things very, very seriously.

The joke was intended to be absurd, but the absurdity presumed a lack of seriousness in the whole matter. It was an attempt at post-serious humor - but most people with common sense agree that the struggles of Tibet still deserve respect and seriousness. The joke is on anyone who really cares. It came across as the kind of out-of-touch humor that overprivileged, spiritually mean, advertising industry creatives (specifically, the kind that kids refer to as "douchebags") would come up with. That's one explanation why the commercial was offensive, but view it below and offer your own if you like. Another perspective: As Rabbi Eliyahu Fink said on Twitter tonight, "Amazing. More people are offended by Groupon's ads than the coarse objectification of women in EVERY SINGLE OTHER AD!"

- Read Write Web

By using the troubles of the Tibetan people to advertise its services, Groupon managed to infuriate, well, everyone. Seconds after the spot aired, Twitter erupted with posts of outrage about the commercial. And the hate-fest has only increased this morning, with outlets like Forbes reporting that both Chinese and Tibetan activists were outraged by the ad. (The Chinese didn’t like the fact that the commercial declared the Tibetan people “in trouble” — a fact they vehemently dispute; and, obviously, Tibetans don’t like it because their plight has been cheapened by becoming the set up for a $15 coupon.)

- Digital Trends

Who is in charge of decision-making at Groupon? Because not only did the discount site turn down $6 billion from Google last year, they also produced the worst Super Bowl ad of 2011. And cast Timothy Hutton in it!

There must have been someone along the way who said, you know, "This isn't actually funny enough to overcome the callous treatment not just of Tibet but of earnest advocacy in general, guys," right? Wasn't there some courageous middle manager somewhere who said, "Listen, I totally 'get' the joke, it's just not that funny, and not really worth it, and weirdly hostile to Tibet, and people who try to make a difference," or something? Not even anyone who pointed out that Tibetans don't really eat a lot of fish?

- Gawker

The funny — or rather "tragic" thing about this is that according to their blog, Groupon had set up to make fun of themselves and to help the very causes they were lampooning:

Since we grew out of a collective action and philanthropy site (ThePoint.com) and ended up selling coupons, we loved the idea of poking fun at ourselves by talking about discounts as a noble cause. So we bought the spots, hired mockumentary expert Christopher Guest to direct them, enlisted some celebrity faux-philanthropists, and plopped down three Groupon ads before, during, and after the biggest American football game in the world.

You can view the already aired commercials, as well as new ones as we release them, at SaveTheMoney.org . And if you’ve saved enough money for yourself and feel like saving something else, you can donate to mission-driven organizations that are doing great work for the causes featured in our PSA parodies. If you guys pony up, Groupon will contribute matching donations of up to $100,000 for three featured charities – Rainforest Action Network, buildOn, and the Tibet Fund — and Groupon credit of up to $100,000 for contributions made to Greenpeace.

Oh, man. So Groupon, which isn't even three years old but is growing fast, wanted to beat its sudden rush of competition by becoming a household name. Spending $3 million to get into every American household via the Super Bowl must have seemed like a great idea.

But you know what's not a great idea? Putting sophisticated and/or obscure attempts at self-deprecating humour on during a football game, when emotions and expectations are at an all-time high. And poking fun at issues that people tend to get really emotional about as well. You add that match to the dry pile of hay that is a bunch of drunk people on Twitter, and you have something that is very much beyond your control.

zone: collapse
size: 300x600
keywords: origin=gawker, visited=gawkerfront, refer=search

The Tibet ad was part of a series, all starring well-known Hollywood actors. The other two made fun of deforestation and saving the whales:






I actually feel bad for Groupon. They spent all that money, and all that creative talent, just to piss people off. And yet, their ads were not mean-spirited. Like Guest's films, they feature a particular style of humour that just isn't accessible — or even funny — to everyone. And they managed to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in front of all the wrong people.

Perhaps Groupon should forget about going mainstream and focus more on niche markets.

Like people who buy ironic t-shirts online: