What’s the secret to Groupon, the coupon-dealing dynamo worth some $15 billion? A sense of humour, said the site’s genuinely funny editor-in-chief Aaron With at his entertaining SXSWi talk.
Groupon may have 500-plus imitators, but who would copy some of the stunts it pulls? Like awarding a baby a $100,000 scolarship because their parents used a Groupon on their first date?
The company’s goofball writing (ever actually read a deal description?) and a left-field corporate culture is not copyable. And it alone is why Groupon is worth billions and its clones are ultimately forgettable.
How do you be funny?
For starters, don’t mention Charlie Sheen. Any cultural references of the day will be gone by tomorrow, so don’t use them. Snuggies are a good example of a played-out meme of yesterday. Instead, create your own humour.
“Customers are endlessly barraged with boring, creatively bankrupt marketing messaging that insults their intelligence,” he argued. “They basically ignore it.”
Groupon tried its best to do that during the Super Bowl, and failed epically. Its ads featured celebrities like Elizabeth Hurley and Cuba Gooding Jr. mocking causes like stopping rain forest destruction and global warming. The ads, With said, were a fiasco, and alienated a lot of people.
But whatever the company does, whether it works or not, it does it with 100 per cent vigor. That was With’s main take-away. Groupon doesn’t just write silly copy for its daily deals, it is an entirely silly place.
Job interviews at Groupon test the sense of humour of the prospective employee. Team building exercizes are pranks. The corporate communication is sarcasm. “Speak up, I can’t hear!” yelled someone in the audience as With was speaking. “It’s OK, I wasn’t saying anything important anyway,” he responded.
You can copy business models, design, and even ideas, but you can’t copy a sense of humour. Groupon is built on that.
