Patrick Barbanes

Groupon? They Need Help That I Can’t Provide

Groupon: if I had any feelings about them before, now they’re all bad, thanks to their Super Bowl commercials.

And from what I could tell in the twitter stream, a lot of people had never even heard of them. (Do a twitter search on “groupon” – or better yet, I already did it for you: http://bit.ly/groupoff ) Those that had heard of them, or at least the ones tweeting, are mostly negative about the ads.

Yet Groupon is one of the darlings of the internet world. Huge valuation, that sort of thing. (Their business model brings you “deals”; in other words, they can save you a buck. Whoopee, that’s taking online social networking in a bold, new direction!)

If you were watching the Super Bowl, you probably saw the Tibet ad. But there’s not just the one disrespectful – I’m sorry…”edgy”.. ad, there’s three. With another coming soon. It’s supposed to be about “schools in some of the world’s poorest villages.” Let the hilarity ensue.

From a brand perspective, can Groupon recover? Should they use social media to recover, much as they’ve used social media to grow their business? What kind of PR spin should they muster up?

Guess what?…I don’t care. They’ve already struck out in my book. But as I looked into it, I keep seeing more swings and misses.

There is a “discussion” on the Groupon site – it’s just buried in their site a bit here http://gr.pn/hiW8YK. There’s also plenty of comments – mostly negative as of the time I’m writing this – on the Groupon blog post http://gr.pn/anewlow that describes the development of the commercials.

Both are filled with mostly negative comments, with no “discussion” at all from Groupon, just comments from others.

Strike 1 for Groupon’s listening skills.

The Groupon staff member leads off the discussion, though, not with any apology or even recognition of any offense or disrespect, but with this oh-so-funny, tongue-in-cheek bit:

“Welcome, and please join Groupon to save the money. Every day, disadvantaged charities are forced to bombard us with emotional manipulation, sidewalk-obstructing volunteers, and binders filled with mathematical models and compelling photographs that connive us into doing good. Groupon makes it easy to save the money, and now, we’re making it easy to give to other worthy causes, too.”

That was posted about 4 hours ago, well after much of the negative reaction to the commercials had surfaced. So it looks like Groupon would rather dig in than dig out. They seem to taking the advice of someone else who is tone deaf, who said, “Don’t retreat – reload.”

Strike two.

The Mission statement of the advertising agency (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) that represented them for these ads is “To produce the most talked about, written about advertising in the world.”

Too bad “respectful” isn’t in there.

Strike 3. By talking about these ads, I’m helping fulfill that soulless mission.

So don’t hold your breath expecting Groupon to do any damage control. And I hope they don’t. Here’s what I’d like to see: they are offering to match donations on their savethemoney.org site. I’d like to see some financier step up and donate enough money that a dollar-for-dollar match would bankrupt Groupon.

Groupon’s misstep was not a simple one of a slipped-tongue tweet or an off-color joke that you might tell and then immediately regret. It was an orchestrated advertising strategy, developed over time, with considered intent, by multiple people in multiple organizations.

Like BP in the Gulf oil tragedy, Groupon doesn’t deserve help “fixing” their message. They need a higher power’s help fixing their hearts.

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