I had resolved to leave my computer off during the Super Bowl, but Groupon’s tasteless Tibet ad changed all that. It warmed my heart to see posts on Facebook and Twitter confirming how badly this ad backfired.
The offense to the Tibetan people has been well-covered, so I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about Groupon’s offense of sound marketing principles.
1. Know Thy Customer
If Groupon truly knew its customers, it would never have run the Tibet ad. According to Groupon, 85% have degrees beyond high school and nearly 70% make over $50,000/year. Perhaps the company felt that an educated, upwardly mobile audience would get the humor – but that’s looking only at demographics. What about psychographics – what people think, value, and act upon in their lives? How would Groupon subscribers react to a joke about Tibet to sell online coupons? As they say in trial law, don’t ask a question to which you don’t know the answer…
2. Who Are You?
According to Groupon’s blog,
“…we realized that in spite of how much we’d grown, a ton of people still hadn’t heard of Groupon.”
This was Groupon’s chance to introduce itself to a much broader audience, so you would think they’d stick to core principles like: who are you, why you exist, and why we should care. Unfortunately Groupon made a poor first impression here.
3. Wasted Space
Super Bowl advertising is all about capturing share of mind and leaving a favorable lasting impression. You can entertain (Budweiser), inform (Verizon), change attitudes (Chrysler), etc. but what was Groupon doing, besides alienating its audience to the tune of millions of dollars down the drain?
4. Bad Decision Making
Groupon’s blog shares how they arrived at the Tibet ad:
“…we decided to give in to our Napoleon complex and invade the rest of the world with a proper Super Bowl commercial….. Our peculiar taste in humor made it really hard for outside agencies to come up with concepts we liked. This time around, we had better luck with the ad firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky… we gave them a shot at pitching us concepts, and they came up with an idea we couldn’t resist blowing millions of dollars on.”
Any CEO with a “Napoleon complex” should probably be kept at a safe distance from ad agencies, don’t you think? Ad agencies often pay close attention to the person writing the check, and this episode smacks of a bad case of the Emperor’s Clothes. That line about “our peculiar taste in humor” should have read: “our CEO’s peculiar taste in humor.” My question is, why was the ad written to the CEO’s taste? Shouldn’t it have been geared to the tastes of a typical Super Bowl audience? (cue the Budweiser dog commercial…) And where was Groupon’s marketing department when all of this was unfolding – why didn’t someone in a senior marketing role take the CEO’s aside and say something?
Conclusion
Although I like textbook cases of marketing (good or bad) and see the value of mistakes as teachable moments, Groupon’s spectacular failure didn’t need to happen. The company failed to understand its subscribers and the Super Bowl audience, looked foolish in front of 110 million viewers, and failed to make the case for Groupon’s service.
This was not a case of hindsight being 20/20 – if Groupon had taken the time to understand their audience and what message they needed to see in these SuperBowl ads the entire fiasco could have been prevented.
Hoping you take the time to understand your audience, focus your messaging, and keep your Napoleons in check.