BU Students Vote: Groupon vs. LivingSocial

To me, Groupon vs. LivingSocial is the equivalent of the Pepsi vs. Coke wars and Apple vs. Microsoft saga.

What are Groupon and LivingSocial?

Groupon and LivingSocial are coupon-based companies that send users an email each morning featuring a local, business deal. Discounted vouchers range from 50-90% off restaurants, theaters, sporting events, spas, haircuts and more.

What are some differences between Groupon and LivingSocial?

1. Based in Chicago, Groupon pioneered the concept of using collective buying to get a daily deal on local goods and services. Headquartered in Washington DC, LivingSocial was founded as a social discovery and cataloging network company.
2. Groupon declined a $3 billion offer from Yahoo and $6 billion offer from Google, while LivingSocial received a $175 million investment from Amazon in December 2010.
3. As of December 2010, Groupon claimed more than 44 million subscribers while LivingSocial declared approximately 20 million members.

Groupon vs. LivingSocial: Super Bowl XLV Advertisements

Created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Groupon’s controversial pre and post-game spots:

Created by The Martin Agency, LivingSocial’s pre-game spot:  

Given all that information, which service do BU students prefer?

And the winner is…Groupon!

Digital Strategy Insights from Hill Holliday’s DJ Capobianco

BU alum @djcap aka DJ Capobianco visited AdLab yesterday to share his insights on digital strategy. As an Assistant Digital Strategist at one of Boston’s largest advertising agencies, Hill Holliday, DJ outlined the importance of digital strategy in a rapidly changing media landscape.

To recap his presentation, let’s begin with the basics.

What does a digital strategist do?

• Keeps the clients, the agency and its constituents smart about what’s going on in digital.
• Informs clients on what they need to do to be successful in the digital realm as opposed to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
• Informs creatives about the appropriate digital platforms. In the way that a creative strategist makes sure the message is on brand, the digital strategist makes sure the platform and the idea work.
• Works with analytics team to finish off monitoring and management.
• Presents the final analysis to the client.

Why is digital strategy important?

Technologies have changed behaviors and expectations for consumers. Media has become increasingly pervasive, and the way people consume media within the digital channel is rapidly changing. Media consumption is growing. According to DJ, “It’s not really growing apart, it’s growing together and that’s where digital strategy comes into play.”

How to develop a digital strategy

Examples of companies using digital integration effectively

MTV

This visualization is from the 2009 VMAs. MTV worked with Radian6 to analyze the content and to aggregate what was being talked about. They would bring up the pictures of the celebrity or the topic as it got more popular.

DJ’s opinion: It’s an interesting way to ensure that people are still engaging with the MTV brand even when stuff isn’t on the air.

ABC

ABC and the Oscars developed an iPad app where you could go behind the scenes during the commercials and learn more about the Oscars. You could tweet about the Oscars, and you could post about the Oscars. Cameras were in the green rooms and make-up rooms.

DJ’s opinion: This year it was unbranded but imagine if Revlon were to be the main sponsor of this app next year. How can you make sure your audience knows that you understand what they are interested in? How can you align with what they want to talk about and be relevant? You can still have paid media and be authentic. You just have to make sure you aren’t misaligning.

ABC built this iPad app.  ABC is the one empowering consumers to throw up a wall in between their eyes and those tv spots during commercial breaks. ABC is the one encouraging people to look down during those broadcasts. That’s a pretty big leap of faith that they have content across their screens that is compelling enough that they won’t lose peoples’ attention, even though they are creating more places to experience it. Through this app, they got a lot of engagement.

Audi

Audi did a great job with branded integration through this Super Bowl commercial:

Notice the hashtag present with no URL:

DJ’s opinion: Their whole brand positioning is “rebellious luxury”— luxury but for the youth. They thought, “We know that the people we are going after know how to get to audi.com. How can we make this spot work harder for us?” They had a social media campaign that backed up what they did on TV (a very expensive Super Bowl spot). The way they amortized that cost was to buy a promoted tweet with #ProgressIs. They pulled out paid support and it’s still going. People are talking about what progress means, and Audi is capitalizing on that conversation because all the Audi tweets are naturally at the top.

They figured out how to get people talking about their brand without talking about “I love that feature within the Audi.” They’ve gotten people into the funnel. They focused on getting in minds, becoming relevant and showing off the brand in really cool way and hopefully getting people to engage over time.

#TVNext: The Convergence of Mass Media with Social Media

Hill Holliday explored how TV got portable, connected and social with their TVNext Summit. Through this event, they show the best examples of media outlets and entertainment franchises doing these three things. Hill provides this compelling example of an entertainment franchise effectively integrating social media and television:

Thank you for an incredibly informative, engaging presentation DJ!