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Looks like Groupon has some vacancies on its copy desk

Fishing is what famous literary hero Moby Dick did after getting in a big fight with a big whale.

Jody LaFerriere noticed this Groupon deal for a ride on a solar-powered boat in Boston Harbor (note: The ride does not include diving for sponges; it involves casting "a lure that turns into a sponge as it drifts in the water and makes friends with mermaids who haven't bathed in years").

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Comments

Been years since I've used Groupon but I remember that the emails had strange copy, throw away humor attempts that seemed bot generated but couldn't have been. Maybe they never fired the copy writer?

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like the "Celebrate President Alexander Hamilton" message they sent back in February for Presidents' Day.

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Actually the Groupon "humorist" (who coincidentally was on millionaire matchmaker) left 6 months ago:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/clown-prince-of-groupon-mov...

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Moby Dick IS the whale.

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she said.

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As the owner and Captain of SunPlugged, I should explain that we take children between the ages of 2 and 6 out for a fun trip on Fort Point Channel. We let the kids try to "catch" a sponge using a small green "algae" capsule. After trolling around for ten to fifteen minutes, the capsule dissolves and the children think they have caught a sponge. They leave with their newly caught sponge in a zip lock bag with water and a coloring sheet with fun facts about sponges. It's very difficult to word it correctly as to not tip off the youngsters what is really happening, while also explaining the process to the adults. You would be shocked at how many parents show up expecting to actually go out and catch sponges with a tiny children's fishing pole.

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You would be shocked at how dumb you look, continuing to confuse customers by not making it clearer what you're doing.

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You're right. Other than that glaring error, this would have been flawless ad copy.

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that Groupon sends a deal template to participating vendors, and sometimes, they don't delete the sample text. I've gotten odd Groupons offers myself, where the text doesn't match the deal at all.

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The business I used to run frequently ran Groupon deals, and the ad copy always turned into a knock down, drag out fight. Groupon makes the vendor agree that they (Groupon) retain all creative control over the ad copy. However, what they send back is terrible. They pride themselves on being witty and whimsical, but they end up being so incredibly factually inaccurate that the deal is frequently misrepresented or the business is negatively portrayed.

They also totally lack copy editing, so it would fall on our team to correct their typos. Couple that with their tendency to dawdle over ads until the eleventh hour, and you get some pissed off vendors. More than once, I had to pull a Groupon offer within 12 hours of when it was supposed to run because they refused to change ad copy that made our company look terrible.

Vendor beware.

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