16564: Groupon Grouper Groping…?

 

Is Groupon messing around with groupings? Vaginal steaming, all you can eat buffet, and seafood dinner—culminating with an invitation to unwrap joyful memories.

9680: The Black Groupon.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

An ‘African-American Groupon’

By Sandra Guy

Christopher Nolen, an independent film director and producer, enjoys using Groupon coupons to get half-off deals at restaurants. So when he found out about a new deals website dedicated to black-owned businesses, he signed up.

“This is the African-American community’s Groupon — it’s a great way to give African-American business owners some notoriety and help them in this economy,” said Nolen, a Roseland native who teaches eighth-grade algebra in addition to running Nferno Productions, Inc., in Calumet City.

The site, Blackmark-it.com, whose name is a play off of the idea of marking an event and the black community’s often-hidden marketplaces, launches Monday (January 16).

Its first discount is for a 40 percent off tax-preparation service by Chicago accountant Emerging Business Solutions Group, LLC.

The first deal will run for one week, as will the next three.

After the first month, the website’s creators intend to offer two deals per week and gradually ramp up to daily deals.

The deals extend beyond spas and nail salons, with discounts ranging from professional photography services to 50-percent off the price of “The Veil of Victory,” a non-fiction book by author Yorli Huff about her experience as an undercover cop.

“As a business owner and filmmaker, it’s incredible when I see other African-Americans helping each other in business,” Nolen said. “We need more of that.”

Blackmark-it.com is the work of Oak Lawn couple Jamel and Natasha Williams, both 33, who financed the web startup on their own after they grew disappointed that so few offers from Groupon and LivingSocial featured black-owned companies. Jamel, a truck driver who manages the couple’s catering business, Covenant Café, and Natasha, a marketing consultant at The Nielsen Company, aim to keep the deals manageable for merchants, and to help strategize other ways the businesses can grow.

“We’re setting maximums (of deals) as low as 25 to 50 to make sure the merchants can meet the demand, and then we can revisit growth strategies,” Natasha Williams said. “For many minority-owned businesses, advertising feels like more risk than a gain.”

Delandon Mason, 34, a jazz and classical-music trumpet player and friend and former college classmate of the Williames at Northern Illinois University, is recruiting subscribers and helping implement strategy. He is using the experience to inform his own entrepreneurial ambitions and to learn how to build a personal brand.

The Williamses are only too aware of the widely publicized missteps of daily deal giant Groupon, including the latest dispute in which a contractor-bidding company alleges that Groupon changed the terms of their deal after both parties had signed off on it.

The Williamses frequent their clients’ businesses and tweak discounts so the merchants maintain their profits.

They’re also cognizant of Groupon’s elaborate list of merchant-help tools, including a scheduler, a rewards program and location-based offers that alert consumers to deals at places near where they are standing and at times the merchant needs more customers.

Compared with most daily deal sites that take half of the cut, Blackmark-it.com takes 20 percent to 40 percent of the revenue from each deal, depending on the deal’s amount, the quantity sold and other factors.

To track each coupon as it is redeemed, merchants may log in to a Blackmark-it web portal; scan coupons set up with their preference of barcodes or QR codes to update the redemptions at checkout in real time, and keep up-to-date with spreadsheets that the Williamses create.

Blackmark-it also will offer for an extra fee a one-minute video commercial, which the merchants may use for their own marketing, Jamel Williams said.

Some analysts say the ability of smaller players to offer better terms poses a threat to the Groupons of the industry, while others say the market affords massive opportunities for all players.

Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note to investors, “While we believe Groupon taps primarily into the $500 billion (worldwide) advertising market, of which $100 billion is local advertising, with Groupon’s expansion into travel, goods and events, the total addressable market is well more than $10 trillion.”

9455: Groupon Deals Pink Slips To Staff.

The Chicago Tribune reported that Groupon is dumping “the worst 10 percent of its sales staff.” Wow, it must have been tough to weed out the bad from that particular collection of hacks. Groupon sure has orchestrated a nice send-off, announcing to the world that the terminated are the most awful of its employees. Shouldn’t a company also be held accountable for having such a high percentage of substandard performers to begin with?

Groupon to lay off 10% of sales staff

Reuters

Chicago-based daily deals site Groupon is replacing the worst 10 percent of its sales staff as it pushes to win stronger deals from merchants and ensure it can keep growing, the company’s chief executive told potential IPO investors on Wednesday.

Andrew Mason told investors who had gathered in Boston that the action was designed to improve the quality of the deals being offered.

Groupon currently has a salesforce of over 4,800, according to its IPO prospectus.

As of September 30, Groupon had 143 million subscribers, but in the third quarter only 30 million of them bought Groupons.

Repeat customers increased from the second quarter but only numbered 16 million, according to a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Failing to win enough repeat customers may dampen the rapid growth that currently supports the company’s roughly $11 billion valuation.

Some merchants have complained that Groupon did not help them win permanent customers, and instead delivered bargain seekers taking advantage of price cuts. A portfolio manager at the roadshow said these complaints raised doubts about Groupon’s ability to keep growing.

“At the end of the day all they’re offering the merchant is the ability to cut price … you can cut price any time you want. You don’t need Groupon to do it,” said a portfolio manager whose firm manages more than $20 billion and who attended the presentation in Boston.

But Mason does not see it that way. On Wednesday, he described Groupon’s approach as “risk-free performance marketing” for businesses.

“They pay for customers (coming through) the door,” Mason explained. “You’re not going to get this from the Yellow Pages.”

Mason also said that a steady stream of deals from new merchants makes for a better customer experience, and there is some bias toward signing up new merchants rather than keeping old ones.

A spokesman for Groupon declined to comment.

In the online version of Groupon’s roadshow, the company said that about half of the businesses offering Groupons in the third quarter had previously done so.

Groupon’s IPO is scheduled to price on November 3, and the shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq on November 4 under the ticker “GRPN”.

Underwriters on the IPO are being led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.

8628: Client-Approved Insensitivity.

At The Big Tent, Bill Imada commended Aflac for firing comedian Gilbert Gottfried over his tweet jokes about the tragedy in Japan. Of course, Gottfried continues to find defenders in Joan Rivers, Howard Stern and other assorted idiots. The supporters’ asinine arguments include, “That’s what comedians do!!! We react to tragedy by making jokes to help people in tough times feel better through laughter.” Um, not really. Professional comics realize there are “comedy killers”—topics that must be avoided as sources of humor—like the Holocaust, JFK assassination and more. Hence, Gottfried should have known better. One can’t help but wonder if latent racism led Gottfried and his backers to think everything was hunky-dory.

One also can’t help but wonder why advertisers are quick to hit the termination button in these scenarios, yet reluctant to execute the same maneuver with partners on Madison Avenue. For example, when Groupon took heat for its Super Bowl commercial that made light of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, why wasn’t CP+B axed? When MetroPCS offended citizens with commercials starring the stereotypical Chad and Ranjit, why didn’t The Richards Group receive a pink slip? When Verizon insulted Italian-Americans with an ignorant spot, why didn’t McCann get canned? Draftfcb and Omnicom routinely piss off the public via client-sponsored obscenities. The list goes on. And so does the consequence-free cultural cluelessness.

Somebody ask Donald Trump to holler his trademark line: “You’re fired!”

8541: Food For Thoughtlessness.

Perusing the menu in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• An Indiana restaurant that erected billboards making references to the 1978 Jonestown cult massacre (pictured above) decided to take down the signs after receiving complaints that the message was offensive and insensitive. However, customers can get a great meal deal at the restaurant through the equally offensive Groupon.

• Rush Limbaugh dissed First Lady Michelle Obama for eating short ribs during her trip to Colorado, insisting the meal contradicted her promotion of nutrition and exercise. “The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice,” said Limbaugh. “And then we hear that she’s out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving … I’m trying to say that our First Lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you.” Would someone please serve the obese former drug addict a pitcher of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid?

8482: Conflict Of Disinterest.

Confusion reigns with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A new Pew Research Center poll reported about half of all Americans are clueless about the events happening in Egypt. Sarah Palin definitely falls into the group, as her Egyptian knowledge is based on viewing Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy series.

• Mickey D’s worldwide sales were up 3.5 percent in January. The fast feeder also hopes to spike February global sales by introducing the McMummy sandwich to salute the happenings in Egypt.

• Groupon continues to take heat for its asinine Super Bowl spot, with the company CEO defending the work by declaring, “We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes—even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?” Um, a culturally clueless company partnering with a White advertising agency known for offending the masses.

8478: Groupon Earns Culturally Clueless Coupon.

The New York Daily News reported on the grossly insensitive and ignorant Groupon Super Bowl commercial. Guess no one warned the online deal company about the hazards of hiring a culturally clueless White ad agency with a knack for offending the masses.

Groupon Super Bowl ad falls flat; slammed for making fun of China-Tibet conflict

By Philip Caulfield, Daily News Staff Writer

Groupon’s latest deal: Spend millions on a thirty-second commercial and, in return, get billions of people angry at you.

Activists and Internet users in China are slamming online deals vendor Groupon for an offensive Super Bowl spot they said made light of the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The first half of the ad showed picturesque landscapes of Tibet while a voiceover by actor Timothy Hutton gravely announced, “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy.”

The ad then cut to Hutton in a lively restaurant scene, announcing happily, “But they still whip up an AMAZING fish curry,” and boasting of the 50% discount he got on the meal thanks to Groupon.

The attempt at humor fell flat with angry Internet users who complained that the ad trivialized the decades-long tension between the two nations.

“Groupon seems to have achieved the unique feat of paying $3 [million] to lose customers who previously loved them,” Rohit Bhargava, an influential blogger and marketing professor, posted on Twitter.

The misfire was poorly timed for the daily deals website, which is on the brink of a $15 billion IPO and is reportedly preparing to launch a portal in China.

“Groupon is doomed to failure now in China,” a user posted on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter, said “Groupon’s lax approach to the Chinese market is not going to work!”

“Dumb, dumber, dumbest — how stupid can you be to air a pro-Tibet commercial during the Superbowl to promote your company?” wrote Marc van der Chijs, an entrepreneur in Shanghai who founded the popular Chinese video sharing site, Tudou.com

Users on Twitter also hammered the ads, and one created a satirical hash tag, #failedgrouponcommericals, to suggest satirical angles for Groupon to consider for future commercials.

“Breast cancer affects both men and women, but you can totes buy cute bras for 69% off!” the user tweeted.

“Dear #Groupon I really wanted to take you up on that half price Peppi’s deal, but you’re kind of a d—che. I will pay full price instead,” another wrote.

Others charged that Tibetans do not make or eat fish curry, and the website for the Himalayan Restaurant and Bar near Chicago, a restaurant similar to the one mentioned in the ad, does not list fish curry on its menu.

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said that he didn’t think the ad offensive and called it a “spoof” on typical celebrity-endorsed public service announcements, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Groupon said the ad was part of a plan to raise funds for the plight of people in Tibet, and they also ran spots to benefit other charities featuring Cuba Gooding Jr., Elizabeth Hurley and Sheryl Crow.

8228: Sweeten The Deal, Groupon.

Given the news that Groupon rejected a $6 billion buyout offer from Google, candidates should think twice before responding to these actual craigslist ads. Hold out for six-figure salaries, folks.

Copy Editor – Proofreading – Groupon (River North)

Date: 2010-12-03, 2:37PM CST
Reply to: see below

Launched in November 2008 in Chicago, Groupon is the daily deal site offering unbeatable deals on the best stuff to do, eat, see, and buy in cities across the world. Groupon uses collective buying power to offer unbeatable prices and provide significant benefits to businesses and consumers.

Working at Groupon offers opportunities, challenges and merit badges that are difficult to find at other companies. While everyone has their individual responsibilities, Groupon is a highly collaborative, communicative work environment. Character, enthusiasm, perspective, and ridiculous baking skills are all highly valued.

We regularly look for full-time, in-house copy editors to join the team, which is located in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.

Each deal’s write-up begins with 3–4 grafs that explain the deal and ends with a loosely connected, purely comedic section housed within ”Groupon the Cat.” Groupon copy editors make sure the copy is clear, concise, and free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. Our copy editors are expected to edit a high volume of content every day, without sacrificing quality or Groupon’s distinct voice; copy editors also assist with factchecking duties as needed. Experience is a must.

Compensation starts at $35K and includes full benefits.

For instructions and to apply, please follow the link below:
http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=ok2hVfwi&s=CRAIGSlist

Factchecker – Groupon (River North)

Date: 2010-12-03, 2:34PM CST
Reply to: see below

Groupon’s editorial department produces a short, humorous write-up that explains each daily deal. We are looking for full-time factcheckers to join the team, and join it well.

Our factcheckers ensure that each deal is accurately presented to our readers, free of any conflicting information, validating any facts we assert about a business before we publish. This role takes the phrase “detail oriented” insanely seriously.

Groupon editorial team members are held not only to a high quality standard, but must also show a willingness and ability to accurately go through a high volume of copy every day. The successful candidate will have demonstrated editorial research experience.

Please follow the link below for instructions and to apply:
http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=ol2hVfwj&s=CRAIGSlist

Compensation: $28K/year plus full benefits.

8028: Groupon Groupies Not Grateful.

Save up to 90 percent? According to various sources, over 30 percent of businesses who use Groupon find the experience unprofitable. Meanwhile, 40 percent of merchants who’ve used Groupon say they’ll never do it again. Booyah!